Chemistry Nexus

Working with element 112 is not easy – it does not occur in the wild and only a few atoms at a time can be made. In this new paper¹ a large group of Swiss, Russian, and Polish authors report:

“a more reliable chemical characterization of element 112, involving the production of two atoms of ²⁸³112 through the alpha decay of the short-lived ²⁸⁷114 (which itself forms in the nuclear fusion reaction of ⁴⁸Ca with ²⁴²Pu) and the adsorption of the two atoms on a gold surface.