A team of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) developed a new, lighter form of the element mendelevium in experiments at the 88-Inch Cyclotron. The newly developed isotope, mendelevium-244, is the 17th and lightest form of mendelevium, which has atomic number 101 on the periodic table. Researchers used Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron, which quickens powerful beams of charged particles at targets to build atoms of heavier elements, to produce mendelevium-244. The team from the Berkeley Lab have identified 12 of the 17 mendelevium isotopes, and have discovered a total of 640 isotopes so far. Researchers are keen to continue other studies of mendelevium-244 with other instrumentation to get more detailed insights about its composition.
