Darmstadtium
Darmstadtium is a synthetic superheavy metal made only by colliding nuclei together in a particle accelerator, with every atom of it ever produced existing for just moments before decaying. It sits in group 10 of the periodic table, below platinum, and is named directly after Darmstadt, the German city where it was first synthesized. Like its neighboring superheavy elements, it has never been produced in a quantity large enough to observe as a bulk material.
- Group · Period
- 10 · 7
- At room temp
- solid
- Melts at
- Not yet available
- Density
- Not yet available
- Discovered
- 1994
Uses
Darmstadtium has no practical, industrial or medical use, and its extreme scarcity and instability mean it never will. Its significance is purely scientific: each atom created and detected helps researchers refine theories of nuclear structure and map out how far the periodic table extends before nuclei become too unstable to exist at all.
History
Darmstadtium was first synthesized in 1994 by researchers at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, who fused accelerated nuclei with a lead target and confirmed the element’s existence through the radioactive decay chains of the handful of atoms produced. It was named darmstadtium after the city itself, one of relatively few elements named directly after the place of its discovery rather than after a person or mythological figure. The name was formally approved by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in 2003.
Fun facts
- Darmstadtium is named directly after Darmstadt, the German city home to the GSI laboratory where it was created.
- Darmstadtium sits below platinum on the periodic table, and chemists predict it should be a dense metal, though this has never been confirmed by direct measurement.
- The longest-lived known isotopes of darmstadtium survive for only a few seconds before decaying.
Frequently asked questions
Does darmstadtium have any real-world use?
No — darmstadtium has no commercial, industrial or medical applications. It exists solely as a subject of nuclear physics research, produced and studied one atom at a time.
How is darmstadtium made?
Darmstadtium is produced by accelerating a beam of nuclei to high speed and firing it at a metal target, so that a beam nucleus and a target nucleus occasionally fuse into a single darmstadtium nucleus. Each successful fusion is identified by the specific chain of radioactive decays that follows.
Why is darmstadtium named after a city?
It was named in recognition of Darmstadt, the German city where the GSI Helmholtz Centre — the laboratory that first synthesized the element — is based, continuing chemistry's long tradition of naming elements after the places where they were discovered.
Isotopes
10 known isotopes
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| Isotope | Natural abundance | Half-life | Decay mode | Mass excess | Binding energy / nucleon | Decay width |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ds-279 | — | 0.216 s | Spontaneous fission (88.5%), Alpha decay (12.5%) | 149,024 keV | 7,229 keV | 2.11 × 10-15 eV |
| Ds-281 | — | 12 s | Spontaneous fission (94%), Alpha decay (6%) | 153,273 keV | 7,220 keV | 3.80 × 10-17 eV |
| Ds-282 | — | 1.1 m | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (50%) | 154,790 keV | 7,217 keV | 6.91 × 10-18 eV |
Show all 10 isotopes
| Ds-267 | — | 3 us | Alpha decay (100%) | 133,880 keV | 7,248 keV | 1.52 × 10-10 eV |
| Ds-269 | — | 0.18 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (25%) | 134,834.67 keV | 7,250.16 keV | 2.53 × 10-12 eV |
| Ds-270 | — | 0.20 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission | 134,681.58 keV | 7,253.76 keV | 2.28 × 10-12 eV |
| Ds-271 | — | 1.6 ms | Alpha decay (100%) | 135,952 keV | 7,252 keV | 2.85 × 10-13 eV |
| Ds-273 | — | 0.19 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (17%) | 138,285 keV | 7,250 keV | 2.40 × 10-12 eV |
| Ds-277 | — | 3.5 ms | Alpha decay (100%), Spontaneous fission (12.5%) | 145,092 keV | 7,237 keV | 1.30 × 10-13 eV |
| Ds-280 | — | 7 ms | Spontaneous fission (100%) | 150,320 keV | 7,227 keV | 6.52 × 10-14 eV |