Study Shows Abnormal Enhancement of a-Particle Clustering in Uranium Isotopes Written by AZoMApr 19 2021 In nuclear physics research, the discovery of new isotopes with extreme proton/neutron numbers is always fascinating. The α-decay in the heavy nuclei region is one of the ubiquitous decay modes and has a crucial role in the search for new isotopes. The illustration of the enhanced α-particle preformation in 214, 216U deduced by the strong proton-neutron interaction. Image Credit: Zhiyuan Zhang. But even after nearly a century of analyzing α-decay, researchers are still unable to perfectly explain how the α-particle forms at the nucleus surface before it is emitted.