Tennessine

At a glance

Symbol

Ts

Atomic number

117

Mass number of its longest-lived isotope

[294]

Group

17

Period

7

Family

superheavy element

Electron configuration

[Rn] 5f¹⁴ 6d¹⁰ 7s² 7p⁵ (predicted)

Electronegativity

not measured

On the table

Period 7, group 17. The other superheavy elements are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.

Electrons and bonding

Only a handful of atoms have ever been made, each lasting seconds or less, so its chemistry is predicted from its place in the table rather than measured.

Properties

State at 25 °C

not known

Physical properties

none measured; no more than a few atoms have ever existed at once

Where it is found

Not found in nature. It is made a few atoms at a time in particle accelerators by fusing lighter nuclei, and each atom decays within seconds to hours.

Discovery and name

A team from Dubna, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University and Lawrence Livermore made it in 2010 by bombarding berkelium-249, produced at Oak Ridge, with calcium-48. It was named in 2016 after Tennessee, home of Oak Ridge and Vanderbilt.