page_title: Rutherfordium
section_title: Gas phase
hierarchical_section_title: Rutherfordium / Experimental chemistry / Gas phase
caption_attribution_description: diagram of RfCl4
context_page_description: Rutherfordium is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Rf and atomic number 104, named after New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford. As a synthetic element, it is not found in nature and can only be created in a laboratory. It is radioactive; the most stable known isotope, ²⁶⁷Rf, has a half-life of approximately 1.3 hours.
  In the periodic table of the elements, it is a d-block element and the second of the fourth-row transition elements. It is a member of the 7th period and belongs to the group 4 elements. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that rutherfordium behaves as the heavier homologue to hafnium in group 4. The chemical properties of rutherfordium are characterized only partly. They compare well with the chemistry of the other group 4 elements, even though some calculations had indicated that the element might show significantly different properties due to relativistic effects.
  In the 1960s, small amounts of rutherfordium were produced in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in the Soviet Union and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
context_section_description: Early work on the study of the chemistry of rutherfordium focused on gas thermochromatography and measurement of relative deposition temperature adsorption curves. The initial work was carried out at Dubna in an attempt to reaffirm their discovery of the element. Recent work is more reliable regarding the identification of the parent rutherfordium radioisotopes. The isotope ²⁶¹ᵐRf has been used for these studies, though the long-lived isotope ²⁶⁷Rf (produced in the decay chain of ²⁹¹Lv, ²⁸⁷Fl, and ²⁸³Cn) may be advantageous for future experiments. The experiments relied on the expectation that rutherfordium would begin the new 6d series of elements and should therefore form a volatile tetrachloride due to the tetrahedral nature of the molecule. Rutherfordium(IV) chloride is more volatile than its lighter homologue hafnium(IV) chloride (HfCl₄) because its bonds are more covalent.
  A series of experiments confirmed that rutherfordium behaves as a typical member of group 4, forming a tetravalent chloride (RfCl₄) and bromide (RfBr₄) as well as an oxychloride (RfOCl₂). A decreased volatility was observed for RfCl
  ₄ when potassium chloride is provided as the solid phase instead of gas, highly indicative of the formation of nonvolatile K
  ₂RfCl
  ₆ mixed salt.
caption: The tetrahedral structure of the RfCl4 molecule
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