Flerovium is the superheavy artificial chemical element with the symbol Fl and atomic number 114. It is an extremely radioactive element that can only be created in the laboratory and does not occur in nature. The element 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 name of the laboratory, in turn, honors the Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov. The name was adopted by IUPAC on May 30, 2012.
In the periodic table of the elements, it is a transactinide element in the p-block. It is a member of the 7th period and is currently placed as the heaviest known member of the carbon group. Initial chemical studies performed in 2007–2008 indicated that flerovium was unexpectedly volatile for a group 14 element;[6] in preliminary results it even seemed to exhibit properties similar to those of the noble gases. More recent results show that flerovium's reaction with gold is similar to that of copernicium, showing that it is a very volatile element that may even be gaseous at standard temperature and pressure, and that while it would show metallic properties, consistent with it being the heavier homologue of lead, it would also be the least reactive metal in group 14.