This book is the first to treat the chemistry of superheavy elements, including important related nuclear aspects, as a self contained topic. It is written for those – students and novices -- who begin to work and those who are working in this fascinating and challenging field of the heaviest and superheavy elements, for their lecturers, their advisers and for the practicing scientists in the field – chemists and physicists - as the most complete source of reference about our today's knowledge of the chemistry of transactinides and superheavy elements. However, besides a number of very detailed discussions for the experts this book shall also provide interesting and easy to read material for teachers who are interested in this subject, for those chemists and physicists who are not experts in the field and for our interested fellow scientists in adjacent fields. Special emphasis is laid on an extensive coverage of the original literature in the reference part of each of the eight chapters to facilitate further and deeper studies of specific aspects. The index for each chapter should provide help to easily find a desired topic and to use this book as a convenient source to get fast access to a desired topic. Superheavy elements – chemical elements which are much heavier than those which we know of from our daily life – are a persistent dream in human minds and the kernel of science fiction literature for about a century.
Quantum mechanics provides the fundamental theoretical apparatus for describing the structure and properties of atoms and molecules in terms of the behaviour of their fundamental components, electrons and nudeL For heavy atoms and molecules containing them, the electrons can move at speeds which represent a substantial fraction of the speed of light, and thus relativity must be taken into account. Relativistic quantum mechanics therefore provides the basic formalism for calculating the properties of heavy-atom systems. The purpose of this book is to provide a detailed description of the application of relativistic quantum mechanics to the many-body prob lem in the theoretical chemistry and physics of heavy and superheavy elements. Recent years have witnessed a continued and growing interest in relativistic quantum chemical methods and the associated computa tional algorithms which facilitate their application. This interest is fu elled by the need to develop robust, yet efficient theoretical approaches, together with efficient algorithms, which can be applied to atoms in the lower part of the Periodic Table and, more particularly, molecules and molecular entities containing such atoms. Such relativistic theories and computational algorithms are an essential ingredient for the description of heavy element chemistry, becoming even more important in the case of superheavy elements. They are destined to become an indispensable tool in the quantum chemist's armoury. Indeed, since relativity influences the structure of every atom in the Periodic Table, relativistic molecular structure methods may replace in many applications the non-relativistic techniques widely used in contemporary research.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 AAAS/SUBARU SB&F PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN SCIENCE BOOKS How new elements are discovered, why they matter and where they will take us. Creating an element is no easy feat. It's the equivalent of firing six trillion bullets a second at a needle in a haystack, hoping the bullet and needle somehow fuse together, then catching it in less than a thousandth of a second – after which it's gone forever. Welcome to the world of the superheavy elements: a realm where scientists use giant machines and spend years trying to make a single atom of mysterious artefacts that have never existed on Earth. From the first elements past uranium, and their role in the atomic bomb, to the latest discoveries stretching the bounds of our chemical world, Superheavy reveals the hidden stories lurking at the edges of the periodic table. Why did US Air Force fly planes into mushroom clouds? Who won the transfermium wars? How did an earthquake help give Japan its first element? And what happened when Superman almost spilled nuclear secrets? In a globe-trotting adventure that stretches from the United States to Russia, Sweden to Australia, Superheavy is your guide to the amazing science filling in the missing pieces of the periodic table. You'll not only marvel at how nuclear science has changed our lives – you'll wonder where it's going to take us in the future.
The story of superheavy elements - those at the very end of the periodic table - is not well known outside the community of heavy-ion physicists and nuclear chemists. But it is a most interesting story which deserves to be known also to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science and indeed to the general public. This is what the present work aims at. It tells the story or rather parts of the story, of how physicists and chemists created elements heavier than uranium or searched for them in nature. And it does so with an emphasis on the frequent discovery and naming disputes concerning the synthesis of very heavy elements. Moreover, it calls attention to the criteria which scientists have adopted for what it means to have discovered a new element. In this branch of modern science it may be more appropriate to speak of creation instead of discovery. The work will be of interest to scientists as well as to scholars studying modern science from a meta-perspective.
This book is intended for physicists and chemists who need to understand the theory of atomic and molecular structure and processes, and who wish to apply the theory to practical problems. As far as practicable, the book provides a self-contained account of the theory of relativistic atomic and molecular structure, based on the accepted formalism of bound-state Quantum Electrodynamics. The author was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1992.
The second edition of "The Chemistry of the Superheavy Elements" provides a complete coverage of the chemistry of a series of elements beginning with atomic number 104 – the transactinides or superheavy elements – including their nuclear properties and production in nuclear reactions at heavy-ion accelerators. The contributors to this work include many renowned scientists who, during the last decades, have made vast contributions towards understanding the physics and chemistry of these elusive elements, both experimentally and theoretically. The main emphasis here is on demonstrating the fascinating studies involved in probing the architecture of the Periodic Table at its uppermost end, where relativistic effects drastically influence chemical properties. All known chemical properties of these elements are described together with the experimental techniques applied to study these short-lived man-made elements one atom-at-a-time. The status of theoretical chemistry and of empirical models is presented as well as aspects of nuclear physics. In addition, one chapter outlines the meanderings in this field from a historical perspective and the search for superheavy elements in Nature.
This important book collects together stateOCoofOCotheOCoart reviews of diverse topics covering almost all the major areas of modern quantum chemistry. The current focus in the discipline of chemistry OCo synthesis, structure, reactivity and dynamics OCo is mainly on control . A variety of essential computational tools at the disposal of chemists have emerged from recent studies in quantum chemistry. The acceptance and application of these tools in the interfacial disciplines of the life and physical sciences continue to grow. The new era of modern quantum chemistry throws up promising potentialities for further research. Reviews of Modern Quantum Chemistry is a joint endeavor, in which renowned scientists from leading universities and research laboratories spanning 22 countries present 59 inOCodepth reviews. Along with a personal introduction written by Professor Walter Kohn, Nobel laureate (Chemistry, 1998), the articles celebrate the scientific contributions of Professor Robert G Parr on the occasion of his 80th birthday. List of Contributors: W Kohn, M Levy, R Pariser, B R Judd, E Lo, B N Plakhutin, A Savin, P Politzer, P Lane, J S Murray, A J Thakkar, S R Gadre, R F Nalewajski, K Jug, M Randic, G Del Re, U Kaldor, E Eliav, A Landau, M Ehara, M Ishida, K Toyota, H Nakatsuji, G Maroulis, A M Mebel, S Mahapatra, R CarbOCoDorca, u Nagy, I A Howard, N H March, SOCoB Liu, R G Pearson, N Watanabe, S TenOCono, S Iwata, Y Udagawa, E Valderrama, X Fradera, I Silanes, J M Ugalde, R J Boyd, E V Ludea, V V Karasiev, L Massa, T Tsuneda, K Hirao, J-M Tao, J P Perdew, O V Gritsenko, M Grning, E J Baerends, F Aparicio, J Garza, A Cedillo, M Galvin, R Vargas, E Engel, A HAck, R N Schmid, R M Dreizler, J Poater, M Sola, M Duran, J Robles, X Fradera, P K Chattaraj, A Poddar, B Maiti, A Cedillo, S Guti(r)rrezOCoOliva, P Jaque, A ToroOCoLabb(r), H Chermette, P Boulet, S Portmann, P Fuentealba, R Contreras, P Geerlings, F De Proft, R Balawender, D P Chong, A Vela, G Merino, F Kootstra, P L de Boeij, R van Leeuwen, J G Snijders, N T Maitra, K Burke, H Appel, E K U Gross, M K Harbola, H F Hameka, C A Daul, I Ciofini, A Bencini, S K Ghosh, A Tachibana, J M CabreraOCoTrujillo, F Tenorio, O Mayorga, M Cases, V Kumar, Y Kawazoe, A M KAster, P Calaminici, Z Gmez, U Reveles, J A Alonso, L M Molina, M J Lpez, F Dugue, A Maanes, C A Fahlstrom, J A Nichols, D A Dixon, P A Derosa, A G Zacarias, J M Seminario, D G Kanhere, A Vichare, S A Blundell, ZOCoY Lu, HOCoY Liu, M Elstner, WOCoT Yang, J Muoz, X Fradera, M Orozco, F J Luque, P Tarakeshwar, H M Lee, K S Kim, M Valiev, E J Bylaska, A Gramada, J H Weare, J Brickmann, M Keil, T E Exner, M Hoffmann & J Rychlewski. Contents: Volume I: Applications of the Automorphisms of SO(8) to the Atomic f Shell (B R Judd & E Lo); Probability Distributions and Valence Shells in Atoms (A Savin); Information Theoretical Approaches to Quantum Chemistry (S R Gadre); Quantum Chemical Justification for Clar''s Valence Structures (M Randic); Functional Expansion Approach in Density Functional Theory (S-B Liu); Normconserving Pseudopotentials for the Exact Exchange Functional (E Engel et al.); Volume II: Chemical Reactivity and Dynamics within a Density-based Quantum Mechanical Framework (P K Chattaraj et al.); Fukui Functions and Local Softness (H Chermette et al.); The Nuclear Fukui Function (P Geerlings et al.); Causality in Time-Dependent Density-Functional Theory (M K Harbola); Theoretical Studies of Molecular Magnetism (H F Hameka); Melting in Finite-Sized Systems (D G Kanhere et al.); Density Functional Theory (DFT) and Drug Design (M Hoffmann & J Rychlewski); and other papers. Readership: Researchers and academics in computational, physical, fullerene, industrial, polymer, solid state and theoretical/quantum chemistry; nanoscience, superconductivity & magnetic materials, surface science; atomic, computational and condensed matter physics; and thermodynamics."
In this highly interesting book, three pioneering investigators provide an account of the discovery and investigation of the nuclear and chemical properties of the twenty presently known transuranium elements. The neutron irradiation of uranium led to the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 and then to the first transuranium element, neptunium (atomic number 93), in 1940. Plutonium (94) quickly followed and the next nine elements completed the actinide series by 1961. Investigation of the chemical properties of the actinides was followed more recently by chemical studies of the first three transactinides — rutherfordium (104), hahnium (105), and seaborgium (106). Recent discoveries have extended the known elements to 112./a
Written by Glenn T. Seaborg, Nobel Laureate and pre-eminent figure in the field, with the assistance of Walter D. Loveland, it covers all aspects of transuranium elements, including their discovery, chemical properties, nuclear properties, nuclear synthesis reactions, experimental techniques, natural occurrence, superheavy elements, and predictions for the future. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of transuranium elements, it conveys the essence of the ideas and distinctive blend of theory and experiment that has marked their study.
Eric R. Scerri presents a modern and fresh exploration of this fundamental topic in the physical sciences, considering the deeper implications of the arrangements of the table to atomic physics and quantum mechanics. This new edition celebrates the completion of the 7th period of the table, with the naming of elements 113, 115, 117, and 118
