Ununbium was first produced by Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Münzenber and their team working at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany on February 9, 1996. They bombarded atoms of lead with ions of zinc with a device known as a linear accelerator. This produced atoms of ununbium-277, an isotope with a half-life of about 0.24 milliseconds (0.00024 seconds).

Ununbium's most stable isotope, ununbium-285, has a half-life of about 10 minutes. It decays into darmstadtium-281 through alpha decay.

Since only a few atoms of ununbium have ever been produced, it currently has no uses outside of basic scientific research.