Berkelium and californium

Californium gleaming.

A late actinide with twenty known isotopes, californium is a manmade transuranic element that does not occur naturally. It was first identified by Glenn Seaborg and co-workers in February 1950 in an experiment that used a 60-inch cyclotron to bombard curium-242 targets with helium ions. Although named primarily for the State of California, it also recognizes the University of California at Berk...

Chapter Ten Berkelium

As was the case for the previously discovered transuranium elements, element 97 was first produced via a nuclear bombardment reaction. In December 1949 ion‐exchange separation of the products formed by the bombardment of Am with accelerated alpha particles provided a new electron‐capture activity eluting just ahead of curium (Thompson et al., 1950a,b). This activity was assigned to an isotope (...

CHAPTER ELEVEN CALIFORNIUM Richard

The discovery of californium came in the era of the syntheses and identifications of other transplutonium elements, following the end of World War II. The discovery of the element californium, like many of the other actinide elements, hinged on the development of new experimental techniques in conjunction with predictions based on nuclear systematics. Californium was named after the University ...

Unusual structure, bonding and properties in a californium borate.

The participation of the valence orbitals of actinides in bonding has been debated for decades. Recent experimental and computational investigations demonstrated the involvement of 6p, 6d and/or 5f orbitals in bonding. However, structural and spectroscopic data, as well as theory, indicate a decrease in covalency across the actinide series, and the evidence points to highly ionic, lanthanide-li...

Californium-252 neutron sources for medical applications.