Masses and decay properties of nuclei far from stability

In 1981 a macroscopic-microscopic calculation of 28 fission barriers and 4023 nuclear masses throughout the periodic system was performed with a folded-Yukawa single-particle potential and a Finite-Range microscopic model. A detailed analysis of the results showed that the model described well nuclear masses far from stability as well as other nuclear properties, for example the onset and magnitude of nuclear deformation. The above model has recently been applied to a study of the stability of elements in the heavy and superheavy regions. They show two results from this calculation. First, neutron changes for the predicted properties of the elements in the superheavy region are shown. In particular they now predict 288X and 290X to be the most stable elements in this region, both with a half-life of 200 days. Second, another interesting feature is the small local minimum around Z = 110 and N = 162. This minimum corresponds to deformed shapes and to an N = 162 gap in the deformed neutron single-particle level spectrum. The half-life of 110272X is predicted to be 40 milliseconds