The recently discovered Element 117 is now officially named “tennessine” in recognition of Tennessee’s contributions to its discovery, including the efforts of ORNL, Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee.
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)—which validates the existence of newly discovered elements and approves their official names—gave its final approval to the name “tennessine” following a year-long process that began Dec. 30, 2015, when IUPAC and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics announced verification of the existence of the superheavy element 117, more than five years after scientists first reported its discovery in April 2010.
“The presence of tennessine on the Periodic Table is an affirmation of our state’s standing in the international scientific community, including the facilities ORNL provides to that community as well as the knowledge and expertise of the laboratory’s scientists and technicians,” ORNL Director Thom Mason said.
ORNL had several roles in the discovery, the most prominent being production of the radioisotope berkelium-249 for the search. The berkelium-249 used in the initial discovery and subsequent confirmatory experiments for element 117 was produced by ORNL and the Department of Energy’s Isotope Program, and was provided as a U.S. contribution to those experiments.
Superheavy elements, which do not occur naturally, are synthesized by exposing a radioisotope target to a beam of another specific isotope. In theory, the nuclei will in rare cases combine into a “superheavy” and heretofore unknown element.
In tennessine’s case, the atomic recipe for element 117 required the berkelium-249 target, which was available only from ORNL’s High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), which produces radioisotopes for industry and medicine in addition to its neutron scattering research mission, and the adjoining Radiochemical Engineering Development Center (REDC) where the radioisotopes are processed.