Relativistic electronic structure calculations for the heaviest elements

Recent discoveries of elements 112, 114 and 116 have reinforced attempts to design sensitive experiments to identify these elements chemically. Gas-phase chromatography and electrochemical depositions from aqueous solutions are very promising techniques. From the chemical point of view these elements are very interesting since they should exhibit properties close to those of the noble gases due to the very strong relativistic effects on their electronic shells. Though a number of predictions for these elements were made via extrapolations of properties from the lighter homologs and various semi-empirical models, theoretical works on the basis of fully relativistic quantum-chemical calculations were missing. They have become nowadays possible due to the developments in accurate calculational algorithms and hardware. First relativistic calculations were performed for the systems containing element 112 and Hg and the influence of relativistic effects on various properties has been elucidated. (orig.)