Greifswald researcher revolutionizes the chemistry of superheavy elements!

Greifswald researcher revolutionizes the chemistry of superheavy elements!

What's the latest from the world of science? At CERN's renowned ISOLDE facility in Geneva, a team of researchers has developed an impressive new method for studying the chemical properties of superheavy elements. Dr. Franziska Maier, a talented doctoral student from Greifswald, played a key role in this exciting development. Their work could potentially have an impact on the development of new chemical compounds in cancer treatment, as reported by uni-greifswald.de.

The results of this groundbreaking study were published on November 3, 2025 in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Superheavy elements are known for their instability and the fact that they can only be produced in small quantities in particle accelerators. The new method, based on an ion trap, now allows researchers to precisely measure the electron affinity of atoms and molecules. This is the energy that is released when an electron is added to a neutral atom. This is an important point that science-online.org highlights.

The innovative approaches

Stable chlorine atoms were used to test the new method. The MIRACLS method captures chlorine anions in a multi-ion reflection apparatus, causing them to be repeatedly reflected by the laser beam. This enables measurements with hundreds of thousands of times fewer atoms than previous approaches. The advantage is obvious: conventional measurements are problematic for unstable elements because anions can only pass through the laser beam once. Despite this reduced number of anions, the new method achieves the same measurement accuracy as the traditional methods.

The Greifswald working group has many years of experience in the design and application of electrostatic ion beam traps. In the future, this expertise could also be applied to rare elements such as actinium, which are important for cancer treatment. The electron affinities of molecules could also be determined in this way, which is important for research on antimatter and radioactive molecules.

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