Water Coordination Chemistry of Nobelium and Lawrencium

SHE (Super Heavy Elements, Z>103) chemistry is of great interest due to the impact of relativistic effects. These changes can lead to behavior that deviates from expected. Investigating the chemistry of these elements experimentally is challenging as they must be produced one-atom-at-a-time at particle accelerators and live for seconds or less before decaying away. This creates a difficulty in characterizing the complexes produced in chemical reactions with SHEs. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 88 - Inch Cyclotron facility, FIONA (For the Identification Of Nuclide A) measures the mass of the SHE’s complex produced in our system. These mass characterizations give us information about complex formation, coordination spheres, and oxidation states. We will present on experiments performed with 254No and 255Lr, through the reactions 208Pb(48Ca, 2n)254No and 209Bi(48Ca, 2n)255Lr respectively. These elements were reacted with water, and the coordination species observed will give insight into the bonding character of these nuclides. Calculations are also produced that will give us further information of the electronic configuration in their bonding configurations. Analysis and results of these will be presented.