Californium purification and electrodeposition

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 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.

Progress in Californium-252 Neutron Brachytherapy

The potential of using Cf-252 to treat cancer patients was first described by Shlea and Stoddard in 1965 as a source of neutrons using brachytherapy procedures [Stoddard, 1986]. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the United States and England initiated human clinical trials of Cf-252 neutron brachytherapy (NBT) for treating patients of various cancer types. These earlier trials treated only v...