# Unbiunium

Unbiunium, also known as eka-actinium or element 121, is a hypothetical chemical element; it has symbol Ubu and atomic number 121. Unbiunium and Ubu are the temporary systematic IUPAC name and symbol respectively, which are used until the element is discovered, confirmed, and a permanent name is decided upon. In the periodic table of the elements, it is expected to be the first of the superactinides, and the third element in the eighth period. It has attracted attention because of some predictions that it may be in the island of stability. It is also likely to be the first of a new g-block of elements.
Unbiunium has not yet been synthesized. It is expected to be one of the last few reachable elements with current technology; the limit could be anywhere between element 120 and 124. It will also likely be far more difficult to synthesize than the elements known so far up to 118, and still more difficult than elements 119 and 120. The teams at RIKEN in Japan and at the JINR in Dubna, Russia have indicated plans to attempt the synthesis of element 121 in the future after they attempt elements 119 and 120.
The position of unbiunium in the periodic table suggests that it would have similar properties to lanthanum and actinium; however, relativistic effects may cause some of its properties to differ from those expected from a straight application of periodic trends. For example, unbiunium is expected to have a s$^2$p valence electron configuration, instead of the s$^2$d of lanthanum and actinium or the s$^2$g expected from the Madelung rule, but this is not predicted to affect its chemistry much. It would on the other hand significantly lower its first ionization energy beyond what would be expected from periodic trends.

## Introduction
### Synthesis of superheavy nuclei

A superheavy atomic nucleus is created in a nuclear reaction that combines two other nuclei of unequal size into one; roughly, the more unequal the two nuclei in terms of mass, the greater the possibility that the two react. The material made of the heavier nuclei is made into a target, which is then bombarded by the beam of lighter nuclei. Two nuclei can only fuse into one if they approach each other closely enough; normally, nuclei (all positively charged) repel each other due to electrostatic repulsion. The strong interaction can overcome this repulsion but only within a very short distance from a nucleus; beam nuclei are thus greatly accelerated in order to make such repulsion insignificant compared to the velocity of the beam nucleus. The energy applied to the beam nuclei to accelerate them can cause them to reach speeds as high as one-tenth of the speed of light. However, if too much energy is applied, the beam nucleus can fall apart.
Coming close enough alone is not enough for two nuclei to fuse: when two nuclei approach each other, they usually remain together for about 10$^{−20}$ seconds and then part ways (not necessarily in the same composition as before the reaction) rather than form a single nucleus. This happens because during the attempted formation of a single nucleus, electrostatic repulsion tears apart the nucleus that is being formed. Each pair of a target and a beam is characterized by its cross section—the probability that fusion will occur if two nuclei approach one another expressed in terms of the transverse area that the incident particle must hit in order for the fusion to occur. This fusion may occur as a result of the quantum effect in which nuclei can tunnel through electrostatic repulsion. If the two nuclei can stay close past that phase, multiple nuclear interactions result in redistribution of energy and an energy equilibrium.
The resulting merger is an excited state—termed a compound nucleus—and thus it is very unstable. To reach a more stable state, the temporary merger may fission without formation of a more stable nucleus. Alternatively, the compound nucleus may eject a few neutrons, which would carry away the excitation energy; if the latter is not sufficient for a neutron expulsion, the merger would produce a gamma ray. This happens in about 10$^{−16}$ seconds after the initial nuclear collision and results in creation of a more stable nucleus. The definition by the IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) states that a chemical element can only be recognized as discovered if a nucleus of it has not decayed within 10$^{−14}$ seconds. This value was chosen as an estimate of how long it takes a nucleus to acquire electrons and thus display its chemical properties.

### Decay and detection

The beam passes through the target and reaches the next chamber, the separator; if a new nucleus is produced, it is carried with this beam. In the separator, the newly produced nucleus is separated from other nuclides (that of the original beam and any other reaction products) and transferred to a surface-barrier detector, which stops the nucleus. The exact location of the upcoming impact on the detector is marked; also marked are its energy and the time of the arrival. The transfer takes about 10$^{−6}$ seconds; in order to be detected, the nucleus must survive this long. The nucleus is recorded again once its decay is registered, and the location, the energy, and the time of the decay are measured.
Stability of a nucleus is provided by the strong interaction. However, its range is very short; as nuclei become larger, its influence on the outermost nucleons (protons and neutrons) weakens. At the same time, the nucleus is torn apart by electrostatic repulsion between protons, and its range is not limited. Total binding energy provided by the strong interaction increases linearly with the number of nucleons, whereas electrostatic repulsion increases with the square of the atomic number, i.e. the latter grows faster and becomes increasingly important for heavy and superheavy nuclei. Superheavy nuclei are thus theoretically predicted and have so far been observed to predominantly decay via decay modes that are caused by such repulsion: alpha decay and spontaneous fission. Almost all alpha emitters have over 210 nucleons, and the lightest nuclide primarily undergoing spontaneous fission has 238. In both decay modes, nuclei are inhibited from decaying by corresponding energy barriers for each mode, but they can be tunneled through.
Alpha particles are commonly produced in radioactive decays because the mass of an alpha particle per nucleon is small enough to leave some energy for the alpha particle to be used as kinetic energy to leave the nucleus. Spontaneous fission is caused by electrostatic repulsion tearing the nucleus apart and produces various nuclei in different instances of identical nuclei fissioning. As the atomic number increases, spontaneous fission rapidly becomes more important: spontaneous fission partial half-lives decrease by 23 orders of magnitude from uranium (element 92) to nobelium (element 102), and by 30 orders of magnitude from thorium (element 90) to fermium (element 100). The earlier liquid drop model thus suggested that spontaneous fission would occur nearly instantly due to disappearance of the fission barrier for nuclei with about 280 nucleons. The later nuclear shell model suggested that nuclei with about 300 nucleons would form an island of stability in which nuclei will be more resistant to spontaneous fission and will primarily undergo alpha decay with longer half-lives. Subsequent discoveries suggested that the predicted island might be further than originally anticipated; they also showed that nuclei intermediate between the long-lived actinides and the predicted island are deformed, and gain additional stability from shell effects. Experiments on lighter superheavy nuclei, as well as those closer to the expected island, have shown greater than previously anticipated stability against spontaneous fission, showing the importance of shell effects on nuclei.
Alpha decays are registered by the emitted alpha particles, and the decay products are easy to determine before the actual decay; if such a decay or a series of consecutive decays produces a known nucleus, the original product of a reaction can be easily determined. (That all decays within a decay chain were indeed related to each other is established by the location of these decays, which must be in the same place.) The known nucleus can be recognized by the specific characteristics of decay it undergoes such as decay energy (or more specifically, the kinetic energy of the emitted particle). Spontaneous fission, however, produces various nuclei as products, so the original nuclide cannot be determined from its daughters.

## History

Fusion reactions producing superheavy elements can be divided into "hot" and "cold" fusion, depending on the excitation energy of the compound nucleus produced. In hot fusion reactions, very light, high-energy projectiles are accelerated toward very heavy targets (actinides), giving rise to compound nuclei at high excitation energies (~40–50 MeV) that may fission or evaporate several (3 to 5) neutrons. In cold fusion reactions (which use heavier projectiles, typically from the fourth period, and lighter targets, usually lead and bismuth), the fused nuclei produced have a relatively low excitation energy (~10–20 MeV), which decreases the probability that these products will undergo fission reactions. As the fused nuclei cool to the ground state, they require emission of only one or two neutrons. However, hot fusion reactions tend to produce more neutron-rich products because the actinides have the highest neutron-to-proton ratios of any element that can presently be made in macroscopic quantities; it is currently the only method to produce the superheavy elements from flerovium (element 114) onward.
Attempts to synthesize elements 119 and 120 push the limits of current technology, due to the decreasing cross sections of the production reactions and their probably short half-lives, expected to be on the order of microseconds. Heavier elements, beginning with element 121, would likely be too short-lived to be detected with current technology, decaying within a microsecond before reaching the detectors. Where this one-microsecond border of half-lives lies is not known, and this may allow the synthesis of some isotopes of elements 121 through 124, with the exact limit depending on the model chosen for predicting nuclide masses. It is also possible that element 120 is the last element reachable with current experimental techniques, and that elements from 121 onward will require new methods.
Because of the current impossibility of synthesizing elements beyond californium (Z = 98) in sufficient quantities to create a target, with einsteinium (Z = 99) targets being currently considered, the practical synthesis of elements beyond oganesson requires heavier projectiles, such as titanium-50, chromium-54, iron-58, or nickel-64. This, however, has the drawback of resulting in more symmetrical fusion reactions that are colder and less likely to succeed. For example, the reaction between $^{243}$Am and $^{58}$Fe is expected to have a cross section on the order of 0.5 fb, several orders of magnitude lower than measured cross sections in successful reactions; such an obstacle would make this and similar reactions infeasible for producing unbiunium.

### Past synthesis attempt

The synthesis of unbiunium was first attempted in 1977 by bombarding a target of uranium-238 with copper-65 ions at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany:
    $^{238}$ $_{92}$U + $^{65}$ $_{29}$Cu → $^{303}$ $_{121}$Ubu * → no atoms
No atoms were identified.

## Prospects for future synthesis

Currently, the beam intensities at superheavy element facilities result in about 10$^{12}$ projectiles hitting the target per second; this cannot be increased without burning the target and the detector, and producing larger amounts of the increasingly unstable actinides needed for the target is impractical. The team at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna has built a new superheavy element factory (SHE-factory) with improved detectors and the ability to work on a smaller scale, but even so, continuing beyond element 120 and perhaps 121 would be a great challenge. It is possible that the age of fusion–evaporation reactions to produce new superheavy elements is coming to an end due to the increasingly short half-lives to spontaneous fission and the looming proton drip line, so that new techniques such as nuclear transfer reactions (for example, firing uranium nuclei at each other and letting them exchange protons, potentially producing products with around 120 protons) would be required to reach the superactinides.
Because the cross sections of these fusion-evaporation reactions increase with the asymmetry of the reaction, titanium would be a better projectile than chromium for the synthesis of element 121, though this necessitates an einsteinium target. This poses severe challenges due to the significant heating and damage of the target due to the high radioactivity of einsteinium-254, but it would nonetheless probably be the most promising approach. It would require working on a smaller scale due to the lower amount of $^{254}$Es that can be produced. This small-scale work could in the near future only be carried out in Dubna's SHE-factory.
The isotopes $^{299}$Ubu, $^{300}$Ubu, and $^{301}$Ubu, that could be produced in the reaction between $^{254}$Es and $^{50}$Ti via the 3n and 4n channels, are expected to be the only reachable unbiunium isotopes with half-lives long enough for detection. The cross sections would nevertheless push the limits of what can currently be detected. For example, in a 2016 publication, the cross section of the aforementioned reaction between $^{254}$Es and $^{50}$Ti was predicted to be around 7 fb in the 4n channel, four times lower than the lowest measured cross section for a successful reaction. A 2021 calculation gives similarly low theoretical cross sections of 10 fb for the 3n channel and 0.6 fb for the 4n channel of this reaction, along with cross sections on the order of 1–10 fb for the reactions $^{249}$Bk+$^{54}$Cr, $^{252}$Es+$^{50}$Ti, and $^{258}$Md+$^{48}$Ca. However, $^{252}$Es and $^{258}$Md cannot currently be synthesized in sufficient quantities to form target material.
Should the synthesis of unbiunium isotopes in such a reaction be successful, the resulting nuclei would decay through isotopes of ununennium that could be produced by cross-bombardments in the $^{248}$Cm+$^{51}$V or $^{249}$Bk+$^{50}$Ti reactions, down through known isotopes of tennessine and moscovium synthesized in the $^{249}$Bk+$^{48}$Ca and $^{243}$Am+$^{48}$Ca reactions. The multiplicity of excited states populated by the alpha decay of odd nuclei may however preclude clear cross-bombardment cases, as was seen in the controversial link between $^{293}$Ts and $^{289}$Mc. Heavier isotopes are expected to be more stable; $^{320}$Ubu is predicted to be the most stable unbiunium isotope, but there is no way to synthesize it with current technology as no combination of usable target and projectile could provide enough neutrons.
The teams at RIKEN and at JINR have listed the synthesis of element 121 among their future plans. These two laboratories are best suited to these experiments as they are the only ones in the world where long beam times are accessible for reactions with such low predicted cross-sections.

### Naming

Using Mendeleev's nomenclature for unnamed and undiscovered elements, unbiunium should be known as eka-actinium. Using the 1979 IUPAC recommendations, the element should be temporarily called unbiunium (symbol Ubu) until it is discovered, the discovery is confirmed, and a permanent name chosen. Although widely used in the chemical community on all levels, from chemistry classrooms to advanced textbooks, the recommendations are mostly ignored among scientists who work theoretically or experimentally on superheavy elements, who call it "element 121", with the symbol E121, (121), or 121.

## Nuclear stability and isotopes

The stability of nuclei decreases greatly with the increase in atomic number after curium, element 96, whose half-life is four orders of magnitude longer than that of any currently known higher-numbered element. All isotopes with an atomic number above 101 undergo radioactive decay with half-lives of less than 30 hours. No elements with atomic numbers above 82 (after lead) have stable isotopes. Nevertheless, for reasons not yet well understood, there is a slight increase of nuclear stability around atomic numbers 110–114, which leads to the appearance of what is known in nuclear physics as the "island of stability". This concept, proposed by University of California professor Glenn Seaborg and stemming from the stabilizing effects of the closed nuclear shells around Z = 114 (or possibly 120, 122, 124, or 126) and N = 184 (and possibly also N = 228), explains why superheavy elements last longer than predicted. In fact, the very existence of elements heavier than rutherfordium can be attested to shell effects and the island of stability, as spontaneous fission would rapidly cause such nuclei to disintegrate in a model neglecting such factors.
A 2016 calculation of the half-lives of the isotopes of unbiunium from $^{290}$Ubu to $^{339}$Ubu suggested that those from $^{290}$Ubu to $^{303}$Ubu would not be bound and would decay through proton emission, those from $^{304}$Ubu through $^{314}$Ubu would undergo alpha decay, and those from $^{315}$Ubu to $^{339}$Ubu would undergo spontaneous fission. Only the isotopes from $^{309}$Ubu to $^{314}$Ubu would have long enough alpha-decay lifetimes to be detected in laboratories, starting decay chains terminating in spontaneous fission at moscovium, tennessine, or ununennium. This would present a grave problem for experiments aiming at synthesizing isotopes of unbiunium if true, because the isotopes whose alpha decay could be observed could not be reached by any presently usable combination of target and projectile. Calculations in 2016 and 2017 by the same authors on elements 123 and 125 suggest a less bleak outcome, with alpha decay chains from the more reachable nuclides $^{300–307}$Ubt passing through unbiunium and leading down to bohrium or nihonium. It has also been suggested that cluster decay might be a significant decay mode in competition with alpha decay and spontaneous fission in the region past Z = 120, which would pose yet another hurdle for experimental identification of these nuclides.

## Predicted chemistry

Unbiunium is predicted to be the first element of an unprecedentedly long transition series, called the superactinides in analogy to the earlier actinides. While its behavior is not likely to be very distinct from lanthanum and actinium, it is likely to pose a limit to the applicability of the periodic law; from element 121, the 5g, 6f, 7d, and 8p$_{1/2}$ orbitals are expected to fill up together due to their very close energies, and around the elements in the late 150s and 160s, the 9s, 9p$_{1/2}$, and 8p$_{3/2}$ subshells join in, so that the chemistry of the elements just beyond 121 and 122 (the last for which complete calculations have been conducted) is expected to be so similar that their position in the periodic table would be purely a formal matter.
Based on the Aufbau principle, one would expect the 5g subshell to begin filling at the unbiunium atom. However, while lanthanum does have significant 4f involvement in its chemistry, it does not yet have a 4f electron in its ground-state gas-phase configuration; a greater delay occurs for 5f, where neither actinium nor thorium atoms have a 5f electron although 5f contributes to their chemistry. It is predicted that a similar situation of delayed "radial" collapse might happen for unbiunium so that the 5g orbitals do not start filling until around element 125, even though some 5g chemical involvement may begin earlier. Because of the lack of radial nodes in the 5g orbitals, analogous to the 4f but not the 5f orbitals, the position of unbiunium in the periodic table is expected to be more akin to that of lanthanum than that of actinium among its congeners, and Pekka Pyykkö proposed to rename the superactinides as "superlanthanides" for that reason. The lack of radial nodes in the 4f orbitals contribute to their core-like behavior in the lanthanide series, unlike the more valence-like 5f orbitals in the actinides; however, the relativistic expansion and destabilization of the 5g orbitals should partially compensate for their lack of radial nodes and hence smaller extent.
Unbiunium is expected to fill the 8p$_{1/2}$ orbital due to its relativistic stabilization, with a configuration of [Og] 8s$^2$ 8p$^1$. Nevertheless, the [Og] 7d$^1$ 8s$^2$ configuration, which would be analogous to lanthanum and actinium, is expected to be a low-lying excited state at only 0.412 eV, and the expected [Og] 5g$^1$ 8s$^2$ configuration from the Madelung rule should be at 2.48 eV. The electron configurations of the ions of unbiunium are expected to be Ubu$^+$, [Og]8s$^2$; Ubu$^{2+}$, [Og]8s$^1$; and Ubu$^{3+}$, [Og]. The 8p electron of unbiunium is expected to be very loosely bound, so that its predicted ionization energy of 4.45 eV is lower than that of ununennium (4.53 eV) and all known elements except for the alkali metals from potassium to francium. A similar large reduction in ionization energy is also seen in lawrencium, another element having an anomalous s$^2$p configuration due to relativistic effects.
Despite the change in electron configuration and possibility of using the 5g shell, unbiunium is not expected to behave chemically very differently from lanthanum and actinium. A 2016 calculation on unbiunium monofluoride (UbuF) showed similarities between the valence orbitals of unbiunium in this molecule and those of actinium in actinium monofluoride (AcF); in both molecules, the highest occupied molecular orbital is expected to be non-bonding, unlike in the superficially more similar nihonium monofluoride (NhF) where it is bonding. Nihonium has the electron configuration [Rn] 5f$^{14}$ 6d$^{10}$ 7s$^2$ 7p$^1$, with an s$^2$p valence configuration. Unbiunium may hence be somewhat like lawrencium in having an anomalous s$^2$p configuration that does not affect its chemistry: the bond dissociation energies, bond lengths, and polarizabilities of the UbuF molecule are expected to continue the trend through scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, and actinium, all of which have three valence electrons above a noble gas core. The Ubu–F bond is expected to be strong and polarized, just like for the lanthanum and actinium monofluorides.
The non-bonding electrons on unbiunium in UbuF are expected to be able to bond to extra atoms or groups, resulting in the formation of the unbiunium trihalides UbuX$_3$, analogous to LaX$_3$ and AcX$_3$. Hence, the main oxidation state of unbiunium in its compounds should be +3, although the closeness of the valence subshells' energy levels may permit higher oxidation states, just like in elements 119 and 120. Relativistic effects appear to be small for the unbiunium trihalides, with UbuBr$_3$ and LaBr$_3$ having very similar bonding, though the former should be more ionic. The standard electrode potential for the Ubu$^{3+}$ → Ubu couple is predicted as −2.1 V.