Flerovium is a superheavy chemical element with symbol Fl and atomic number 114. It is an extremely radioactive synthetic element. It is named after the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, where the element was discovered in 1998. The lab's name, in turn, honours Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov (Флёров in Cyrillic, hence the transliteration of "yo" to "e"). IUPAC adopted the name on 30 May 2012. The name and symbol had previously been proposed for element 102 (nobelium), but was not accepted by IUPAC at that time.
It is a transactinide in the p-block of the periodic table. It is in period 7; the heaviest known member of the carbon group, and the last element whose chemistry has been investigated. Initial chemical studies in 2007–2008 indicated that flerovium was unexpectedly volatile for a group 14 element;[16] in preliminary results it even seemed to exhibit properties similar to noble gases. More recent results show that flerovium's reaction with gold is similar to that of copernicium, showing it is very volatile and may even be gaseous at standard temperature and pressure, that it would show metallic properties, consistent with being the heavier homologue of lead, and that it would be the least reactive metal in group 14. Whether flerovium behaves more like a metal or a noble gas is still unresolved as of 2022; it might also be a semiconductor.
About 90 flerovium atoms have been seen: 58 were synthesized directly; the rest have been populated from radioactive decay of heavier elements. All these flerovium atoms have been shown to have mass number 284–290. The stablest known isotope, 289Fl, has a half-life of ~1.9 seconds, but the unconfirmed 290Fl may have a longer half-life of 19 seconds; this would be one of the longest half-lives of any nuclide in these farthest reaches of the periodic table. Flerovium is predicted to be near the centre of the theorized island of stability, and it is expected that heavier flerovium isotopes, especially the possibly magic 298Fl, may have even longer half-lives.