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Ununtrium

Ununtrium is one of the superheavy elements. Elements heavier than uranium are not generally found in nature. Such superheavy elements are created in the lab by colliding lighter atoms together.

In 2004, a research team of Russian and American scientists from the Dubna Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory synthesized the first atom of ununtrium, by first synthesizing ununpentium, element 115, which undergoes alpha decay to become element 113, ununtrium. Element 113 itself decays further to element 111 and beyond to eventually become a more stable element.

One of the atoms of element 113 existed for over a second before decaying. This is a relatively long time for such an unstable superheavy element to exist.

Later that year, a team of Japanese scientists announced that they had directly synthesized element 113 by bombarding atoms of bismuth ( ²⁰⁹₈₃Bi ) and zinc (⁷⁰₃₀Zn ).

To date, only a few atoms of ununtrium have ever been synthesized and little is known about this newly discovered element, except that it is radioactive and short-lived. For that reason there are currently no known uses for ununtrium.