3/23/2021 Berkelium - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table

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Berkelium

Bk
Discovery date 1949

Discovered by Stanley Thompson, Albert Ghiorso, and Glenn Seaborg

Origin of the name Berkelium was named after the town Berkeley, California, where it was first made. Berkelium
Allotropes 97 [247]  

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Group Actinides Melting point 986°C, 1807°F, 1259 K and tablets.
Period 7 Boiling point Unknown

Block f Density (g cm−3) 14.78

Atomic number 97 Relative atomic mass [247]

State at 20°C Solid Key isotopes 247Bk, 249Bk

Electron configuration [Rn] 5f97s2 CAS number 7440-40-6

ChemSpider ID 22409 ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database

Uses and properties

Image explanation

An abstract metal symbol is against a background of vibrant colours representing the creation of the element in nuclear reactors.

Appearance

Berkelium is a radioactive, silvery metal.

Uses

Because it is so rare, berkelium has no commercial or technological use at present.

Biological role

Berkelium has no known biological role. It is toxic due to its radioactivity.

Natural abundance

Less than a gram of berkelium is made each year. It is made in nuclear reactors by the neutron bombardment of plutonium-239.

History
Elements and Periodic Table History
Berkelium was first produced in December 1949, at the University of California at Berkeley, and was made by Stanley Thompson,
Albert Ghiorso, and Glenn Seaborg. They took americium-241, which had first been made in 1944, and bombarded it with helium nuclei
(alpha particles) for several hours in the 60-inch cyclotron. The americium itself had been produced by bombarding plutonium with
neutrons.

The Berkeley team dissolved the target in acid and used ion exchange to separate the new elements that had been created. This was
the isotope berkelium-243 which has a half-life of about 5 hours. It took a further nine years before enough berkelium had been made to
see with the naked eye, and even this was only a few micrograms. The first chemical compound, berkelium dioxide, BkO2, was made in
1962.

Atomic data
Atomic radius, non-bonded
2.44 Covalent radius (Å) 1.68
(Å)
Electronegativity
Electron affinity (kJ mol−1) Unknown Unknown
(Pauling scale)

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Ionisation energies
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th
(kJ mol−1)
598.007 - - - - - - -

Oxidation states and isotopes

Common oxidation states 4, 3

Isotopes Isotope Atomic mass Natural abundance (%) Half life Mode of decay

247 247.070 - 3 α
Bk 1.43 x 10 y

249Bk 249.075 - 320 d β

1.8 x 109 y sf

Pressure and temperature data – advanced

Specific heat capacity
Unknown Young's modulus (GPa) Unknown
(J kg−1 K−1)
Shear modulus (GPa) Unknown Bulk modulus (GPa) Unknown

Vapour pressure

Temperature (K) 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400

Pressure (Pa) - - - - - - - - - - -

Podcasts
Listen to Berkelium Podcast

Transcript :
Chemistry in its element: berkelium
(Promo)

You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World, the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

(End promo)

Meera Senthilingam

This week, no prizes for guessing where this element's name comes from. Eric Scerri.

Eric Scerri

Element 97 in the periodic table is one of only two elements named after a university, namely the University of California at Berkeley.
The other such element is number 110 called darmstadtium after the University of Darmstadt in Germany. The university and the city
of Berkeley were in turn named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher, Bishop George 'Barkeley'. The pronunciation changed from Barkeley
to Berkeley when the name crossed the Atlantic ocean in 1869, the year that the city and university were both founded. Incidentally
this was the same year in which Dimitri Mendeleev published the first mature periodic system and began to predict the existence of
new elements.

But let me get back to berkelium. It was the fifth element in the periodic table after the last naturally occurring element, uranium, to be
artificially synthesised. Berkelium was first made some 60 years ago by Stan Thomson, Al Ghiroso and Glen Seaborg by bombarding
the isotope americium-241 with alpha particles. The half-life of the first isotope of berkelium to be produced in this way was a healthy
4.5 hours. Subsequently discovered isotopes have included berkelium-249 with a half-life of as much as 314 days.

One of the discoverers, Glen Seaborg, was a member of various teams that synthesised a total of 10 elements over a period of many
years. His success led to a proposal that he should have an element named after him. But the official governing body, the International
Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, refused to accept this, on the basis that no living scientist had ever been honoured in this way,
although actually the element fermium was proposed when the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was still living and was indeed accepted.

Finally after much campaigning by chemists around the world, IUPAC relented and element 106 was duly named seaborgium while he
was still alive. This led to an amusing situation whereby people could try to send letters or postcards to Seaborg by using nothing but
a sequence of symbols of various elements in the following order. First of all one could write Sg for element 106 or Seaborg's name.
The second line consisted of Bk for this week's element 97 or the University at which Seaborg worked. The third line was Cf for
element 98, or californium, or the state in which the university stands. Finally, if writing from abroad, the correspondent could add Am
for element 95, or americium, or the country of America to complete the address.

To the credit of several postal systems around the world a handful of people did indeed succeed in getting letters and messages of
congratulations to Seaborg in this cryptic fashion.

Many compounds of element 97, berkelium, have been prepared. Unlike the extremely short half-lives possessed by the superheavy
elements like 117 and 118 that have been in the news recently, experiments on berkelium are relatively easy to perform and its
chemistry has been studied in some detail.

The existence of weighable amounts of berkelium-249 have made it possible to determine some of its properties using macroscopic
quantities. Although the pure element has not yet been isolated, it is predicted to be a silvery metal that would easily oxidise in air at
high temperatures and would be soluble in dilute mineral acids.

X-ray diffraction techniques have been used to identify various berkelium compounds such as berkelium dioxide (BkO2), berkelium
fluoride (BkF3), berkelium oxychloride (BkOCl), and berkelium trioxide (BkO3). The oxidation states seen so far are +3 and +4 in
accordance to its position below terbium in the periodic table.

In 1962 visible amounts of berkelium chloride were isolated, weighing 3 billionth of a gram. This was the first time that visible amounts
of a pure berkelium compound had been produced.

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Like other actinides, berkelium accumulates in skeletal tissue and is therefore highly toxic to humans. The element has not found any
uses yet outside of basic research and plays no known biological role. Nevertheless its discovery was an important step towards the
synthesis of the superheavy elements and has served to test theories of nuclear physics as well as showing that the predictions of the
periodic table are fulfilled well beyond the elements for which it was originally devised.

Meera Senthilingam

Sp playing a pivotal role in fundamental chemistry and physics, while also testing the chemical knowledge of postal services
worldwide. That was scientist and author Eric Scerri from UCLA with the discovery of Berkelium. Now next week, an element that
requires a magic touch - as long as you don't get too close.

Peter Wothers

The next exciting thing about caesium, is that my love is not unrequited, it responds to my touch. Strictly speaking, it's the warmth
from the hand that melts it, given that its melting point is only 28.4 °C. So just holding its container converts the crystalline solid into
liquid gold. Liquid metals are always fascinating - everyone loves mercury; just imagine playing with liquid gold!

But here's the snag that adds to my fascination with this metal - it has a rather fiery temper. In fact, you can't actually touch the metal
itself since it spontaneously bursts into flames in the presence of air and reacts explosively with water. Awkward indeed. My caesium
is sealed inside a glass tube under an atmosphere of the chemically inert gas argon. So to play with it, you have to hold the glass
tube, knowing that if you accidentally crushed it, or dropped it, all hell would break loose.

Meera Senthilingam

And as well as a possible adrenalin rush, join Cambridge University's Peter Wothers for more exciting facts about the liquid gold
element that is caesium in next week's Chemistry in its element. Until then thank you for listening, I'm Meera Senthilingam.

(Promo)

Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.com. There's more
information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld.org/elements.

(End promo)

Video

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References

Visual Elements images and videos

© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.

Data
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet
Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National
Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.

Uses and properties

John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed
December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.

Supply risk data

Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.

History text
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.

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Produced by The Naked Scientists.

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