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Isotopes of bismuth

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Bismuth (Bi) has no stable isotopes, but does have one very long-lived isotope; thus, the relative atomic mass can be given as 208.9803987(16). Although bismuth-209 is now known to be unstable, it has classically been considered to be a "stable" isotope because it has a half-life of over 1.9×1019 years, which is more than a billion (1000 million) times the age of the universe. Besides 209Bi, the most stable bismuth radioisotopes are 210mBi with a half-life of 3.04 million years, 208Bi with a half-life of 368,000 years and 207Bi, with a half-life of 32.9 years, none of which occur in nature. All other isotopes have half-lives under 1 year, most under a day. Of naturally occurring radioisotopes, the most stable is radiogenic 210Bi with a half-life of 5.012 days.

Commercially the radioactive isotope bismuth-213 can be produced by bombarding radium with bremsstrahlung photons from a linear particle accelerator. In 1997 an antibody conjugate with Bi-213, which has a 45-minute half-life, and decays with the emission of an alpha-particle, was used to treat patients with leukemia. This isotope has also been tried in cancer treatment, e.g. in the Targeted Alpha Therapy (TAT) program. Bismuth-213 is also found on the decay chain of uranium-233.

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 bismuth Wikipedia