Darmstadtium · element 110
Made in the German city it is named after, and its most stable atoms survive for about ten seconds
Key facts
Darmstadtium is one of the few elements named after a city. It was made at the GSI laboratory on the outskirts of Darmstadt in November 1994, and when the time came to choose a name the researchers picked their home town. They had considered the suburb of Wixhausen, where the lab actually stands, and colleagues joked about policium because 110 is the German police emergency number.
Element 110 sits in group 10 beneath platinum, and its predicted electron arrangement mirrors platinum's almost exactly. Whether it would be as unreactive or as useful is a question that will probably never be answered, because the most stable known isotope lasts around ten seconds and only a few dozen atoms have ever been made directly.
Where it is found
Darmstadtium does not occur naturally. No isotope lives long enough to survive from any cosmic event, and none has ever been detected outside a laboratory. The total number of atoms ever produced is small, of the order of a hundred if you include the darmstadtium nuclei that appear briefly as decay products of heavier elements.
The discovery reaction fired nickel-62 ions at a lead-208 target and produced darmstadtium-269, which decays in less than a thousandth of a second. Using nickel-64 instead gives darmstadtium-271, which lasts a little longer. The most stable isotope, darmstadtium-281, is never made on purpose. It shows up when flerovium-289, made at Dubna from plutonium and calcium-48, emits two alpha particles in succession.
How it was discovered
Element 110 was hunted for years. Dubna tried thorium and calcium in 1986 and Berkeley tried bismuth and cobalt in 1991, but neither produced convincing results. On 9 November 1994 Sigurd Hofmann's team at GSI recorded one atom of darmstadtium-269 using the SHIP separator, followed within days by more. They confirmed the identity through a chain of alpha decays running down through hassium, seaborgium and rutherfordium to known isotopes.
The IUPAC and IUPAP joint working party accepted the GSI claim in 2001. The name darmstadtium was proposed by the discoverers and approved in August 2003, with the symbol Ds. There was no Cold War dispute this time. The Berlin Wall had fallen five years before the element was made, and the German, Russian and American laboratories were increasingly collaborating rather than competing.
What we use it for
Darmstadtium has no uses, and no one has yet studied its chemistry. Producing it is difficult, and the atoms decay in seconds at best, so even the gas-phase tricks used for hassium have not yet been attempted.
Its scientific value lies in nuclear structure. Darmstadtium's isotopes span a range of neutron numbers, and their half-lives climb steeply as neutrons are added, from microseconds for darmstadtium-269 to around ten seconds for darmstadtium-281. That is exactly what theories of the island of stability predict. For chemists it is a future target. Theory says darmstadtium should be a noble metal like platinum, possibly with a different crystal structure and a taste for higher oxidation states, but testing that needs a longer-lived isotope than any known today.
Reading the numbers
The atomic mass of 281 is the mass number of the longest-lived isotope, not an average of naturally occurring ones, because there are none. The predicted density of nearly 35 grams per cubic centimetre is a calculation and has never been checked. It would be well above platinum's 21.5. No melting point, boiling point, electronegativity or ionisation energy has ever been measured.
The predicted configuration [Rn] 5f14 6d9 7s1 deserves a second look. Platinum's is 5d9 6s1, so darmstadtium appears to copy the element above it exactly, supporting its place in group 10. Some calculations favour two electrons in the 7s shell instead, and the truth is uncertain. Either way, darmstadtium is expected to have a nearly full d shell and to be chemically noble, a confident prediction that nobody has yet been able to test.
Safety and the environment
Every isotope of darmstadtium is radioactive, and the longest-lived decays within seconds. The element cannot accumulate, be stored or be transported. It is made inside shielded accelerator facilities and detected by its own decay, and the total ever produced would not be visible under a microscope. There is no darmstadtium in the environment and no way for the public to be exposed.
Did you know?
- The number 110 is the emergency telephone number for the police in Germany, which led to the joking suggestion of the name policium.
- The GSI team considered naming the element wixhausium after Wixhausen, the district of Darmstadt where the laboratory is located.
- The first darmstadtium atom was detected on 9 November 1994, five years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
- Darmstadtium-281 is not made directly; it appears when flerovium-289 emits two alpha particles.
- Darmstadtium's predicted electron configuration, 6d9 7s1, is a direct copy of platinum's 5d9 6s1 pattern one row up.
More in the superheavy elements
The nearest neighbours of darmstadtium in the family, by atomic number.
See all 15 superheavy elements on one page, or browse all 118 elements. Also listed under the transition metals.
Frequently asked questions
Why is darmstadtium called darmstadtium?
It is named after Darmstadt, the German city where the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research is based. The element was first made there in 1994 and the name was approved by IUPAC in 2003.
How was darmstadtium discovered?
A team led by Sigurd Hofmann at GSI fired nickel-62 ions at a lead-208 target and detected a single atom of darmstadtium-269 on 9 November 1994. Its identity was confirmed by tracing the chain of alpha decays to known lighter isotopes.
What is the half-life of darmstadtium?
It varies enormously by isotope. Darmstadtium-269 lasts well under a millisecond, while the longest-lived known isotope, darmstadtium-281, survives for roughly ten seconds.
Is darmstadtium a metal like platinum?
It is predicted to be, with a similar electron arrangement and noble, unreactive behaviour. No chemistry experiment has yet been carried out on darmstadtium, so this remains untested.
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Written by Anthony. Updated September 2026. Numerical data from Periodic-Table-JSON (CC BY-SA), cross-checked against the Darmstadtium reference article. Spotted an error? Tell us.