Harman Patil (Editor)

Isotopes of actinium

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Actinium (Ac) has no stable isotopes and no characteristic terrestrial isotopic composition, thus a standard atomic mass cannot be given. There are 31 known isotopes, from 206Ac to 236Ac, and 2 isomers. Two isotopes are found in nature, 227Ac and 228Ac, as intermediate decay products of, respectively, 235U and 232Th. 228Ac is extremely rare, and almost all natural actinium is 227Ac.

The most stable isotopes are 227Ac with a half-life of 21.772 years, 225Ac with a half-life of 10.0 days, and 226Ac with a half-life of 29.37 hours. All other isotopes have half-lives under 10 hours, and most under a minute. The shortest-lived known isotope is 217Ac with a half-life of 69 ns. Actinium also has two meta states.

Purified 227Ac comes into equilibrium with its decay products (227Th and 223Fr) after 185 days.

Notes

  • Values marked # are not purely derived from experimental data, but at least partly from systematic trends. Spins with weak assignment arguments are enclosed in parentheses.
  • Uncertainties are given in concise form in parentheses after the corresponding last digits. Uncertainty values denote one standard deviation, except isotopic composition and standard atomic mass from IUPAC which use expanded uncertainties.
  • References

    Isotopes of actinium Wikipedia