Identification of 208Hg

This paper describes in detail the procedure used in identifing the new neutronrich isotope ²⁰⁸Hg and measuring its half-life. The idetification included two-step chemical separations. The first step was the collection of Hg element products from the irradiated target with a high efficiency and good element selectivity, which was realized by means of an off-line melt Ph target device. The second step was to extract periodically the growing T1 element from the collected Hg sample. In the γspectra of the extracted T1 samples a 2614.6keV γ activity with a half-life of 3min was observed, which may only be assigned to the daughter ²⁰⁸T1 of ²⁰⁸Hg β^－ decay.