10 Facts About Nihonium

Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Nh and atomic number 113.

Nihonium was first reported to have been created in 2003 by a Russian–American collaboration at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and in 2004 by a team of Japanese scientists at Riken in Wako, Japan.

Nihonium has been calculated to have similar properties to its homologues boron, aluminium, gallium, indium, and thallium.

Nihonium is the first member of the 7p series of elements and the heaviest group 13 element on the periodic table, below boron, aluminium, gallium, indium, and thallium.

Nihonium is predicted to show many differences from its lighter homologues.

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Nihonium is expected to be less reactive than thallium, because of the greater stabilisation and resultant chemical inactivity of the 7s subshell in nihonium compared to the 6s subshell in thallium.

Nihonium is expected to continue this trend and have +1 as its most stable oxidation state.

Nihonium is predicted to be more similar to silver than thallium: the Nh ion is expected to more willingly bind anions, so that NhCl should be quite soluble in excess hydrochloric acid or ammonia; TlCl is not.

Nihonium should be the most electronegative of the metallic group 13 elements, even more electronegative than tennessine, the period 7 congener of the halogens: in the compound NhTs, the negative charge is expected to be on the nihonium atom rather than the tennessine atom.

Nihonium thus continues the trend down group 13 of reduced stability of the +3 oxidation state, as all five of these compounds have lower reaction energies than the unknown thallium iodide.