Everything about Isotopic Fractionation totally explained
Stable isotopes are chemical
isotopes that are not
radioactive (to current knowledge). Stable isotopes of the same
element have the same chemical characteristics and therefore behave almost identically. The mass differences, due to a difference in the number of
neutrons, result in partial separation of the light isotopes from the heavy isotopes during chemical reactions (
isotope fractionation). For example, the difference in mass between the two stable isotopes of hydrogen,
1H (1 proton, no neutron, also known as
protium) and
2H (1 proton, 1 neutron, also known as
deuterium) is almost 100%. Therefore, a significant fractionation will occur.
Commonly analysed stable isotopes include
oxygen,
carbon,
nitrogen,
hydrogen and
sulfur. These isotope systems have been under investigation for many years as they're relatively simple to measure. Recent advances in
mass spectrometry (ie. multiple-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) now enable the measurement of heavier stable isotopes, such as
iron,
copper,
zinc,
molybdenum, etc.
Stable isotopes have been used in botanical and plant biological investigations for many years, and more and more ecological and biological studies are finding stable isotopes (mostly carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) to be extremely useful. Other workers have used oxygen isotopes to reconstruct historical atmospheric temperatures, making them important tools for climate research.
Most of naturally occurring isotopes are stable; however, a few tens of them are radioactive with very long half-lives. If the half life of a nuclide is comparable to or greater than the Earth's age (4.5 billions years), a significant amount will have survived since the formation of the
Solar System, and will contribute to the natural isotopic composition of a chemical element. The lowest half lives of such isotopes are around 700 million years (for example,
235U). Many isotopes that are presumed to be stable (for example no radioactivity has been observed for them) are predicted to be radioactive with extremely long half-lives (sometimes as high as 10
18 years or more). If the predicted half life falls into an experimentally accessible range, such isotopes have a chance to move from the list of stable nuclides to the radioactive category, once their activity is observed. Good examples are bismuth-209 and tungsten-180 which have been recently (2003) found to be
alpha-active.
Research areas
The
Island of Stability may reveal a number of stable atoms that are heavier (and with more protons) than lead.
Stable isotope fractionation
There are three types of isotope fractionation:
List of stable isotopes
There are 81 known elements which have at least 1 stable isotope. As of September 2007, there were 250 known stable isotopes.
Tin has 10 stable isotopes, more than any other element.
Xenon is the only element which has 9 stable isotopes. There is no element with exactly 8 stable isotopes.
Mononuclidic elements are those that have a single isotope (stable or very long-lived) in their natural abundance. Every element from
hydrogen to
lead has at least one stable isotope with the exceptions of
technetium and
promethium; elements with more than 82 protons only have radioactive isotopes, although they can still occur naturally because their
half-lives are of an order of magnitude not much less than that of the time since the death of a nearby star, or because they occur in a
decay chain of another radioactive isotope with such a half-life. It wasn't until
2003 that
bismuth-209 was shown to be radioactive. All stable isotopes are the ground states of nuclei, excluding tantalum-180m, which is the excited level (the ground state of this nucleus is radioactive), but its decay is extremely strongly forbidden by spin-parity selection rules.
Further Information
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