On December 6, 2000, scientists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, along with scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, announced the creation of ununhexium. They produced ununhexium by bombarding atoms of curium-248 with ions of calcium-48. This produced ununhexium-292, an isotope with a half-life of about 0.6 milliseconds (0.0006 seconds), and four free neutrons.

Ununhexium's most stable isotope, ununhexium-291, has a half-life of about 18 milliseconds. It decays into ununquadium-287 through alpha decay.

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