Tennessine (117Ts) is the most-recently synthesizedsynthetic element, and much of the data is hypothetical. As for any synthetic element, astandard atomic weight cannot be given. Like all synthetic elements, it has nostable isotopes. The first (and so far only)isotopes to be synthesized were293Ts and294Ts in 2009. The longer-lived isotope is294Ts with ahalf-life of 51 ms.
^( ) – Uncertainty (1σ) is given in concise form in parentheses after the corresponding last digits.
^# – Atomic mass marked #: value and uncertainty derived not from purely experimental data, but at least partly from trends from the Mass Surface (TMS).
Between July 2009 and February 2010, the team at theJINR (Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions) ran a 7-month-long experiment to synthesize tennessine using the reaction above.[5]The expected cross-section was of the order of 2pb. The expected evaporation residues,293Ts and294Ts, were predicted to decay via relatively long decay chains as far as isotopes ofdubnium orlawrencium.
Calculated decay chains from the parent nuclei293Ts and294Ts[6]
The team published a paper in April 2010 (first results were presented in January 2010[7]) that six atoms of the isotopes294Ts (one atom) and293Ts (five atoms) were detected.294Ts decayed by sixalpha decays down as far as the new isotope270Db, which underwent apparent spontaneous fission. The lighter odd-even isotope underwent just three alpha decays, as far as281Rg, which underwent spontaneous fission. The reaction was run at two different excitation energies, 35 MeV (dose 2×1019) and 39 MeV (dose 2.4×1019). Initial decay data was published as a preliminary presentation on the JINR website.[8]
A further experiment in May 2010, aimed at studying the chemistry of the granddaughter of tennessine,nihonium, identified a further two atoms of286Nh from decay of294Ts. The original experiment was repeated successfully by the same collaboration in 2012 and by a joint German–American team in May 2014, confirming the discovery.
The below table contains various targets-projectile combinations for which calculations have provided estimates for cross section yields from various neutron evaporation channels. The channel with the highest expected yield is given.
Theoretical calculations in a quantum tunneling model with mass estimates from a macroscopic-microscopic model predict the alpha-decay half-lives of isotopes of tennessine (namely,289–303Ts) to be around 0.1–40 ms.[11][12][13]
^Oganessian, Yu. Ts.; et al. (2013). "Experimental studies of the249Bk +48Ca reaction including decay properties and excitation function for isotopes of element 117, and discovery of the new isotope277Mt".Physical Review C.87 (5) 054621.Bibcode:2013PhRvC..87e4621O.doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.87.054621.
^Wang, Meng; Huang, W.J.; Kondev, F.G.; Audi, G.; Naimi, S. (2021). "The AME 2020 atomic mass evaluation (II). Tables, graphs and references*".Chinese Physics C.45 (3) 030003.doi:10.1088/1674-1137/abddaf.