Astatine isotopes

Astatine is a radioactive element that occurs in nature in uranium and thorium ores, but only to a minute extent. Samples are made by bombarding bismuth with a particles in a cyclotron, which accelerates the particles to a very high speed. Astatine isotopes do not exist long enough for its properties to be studied, but it is thought from spectroscopic measurements to have properties similar to those of iodine. 

Decay, Half-Lives, and Production of Astatine Isotopes"... 

All astatine isotopes, with the exception of At, produce other radionuclides by their decay, consequently complicated decay curves can arise. In astatine isotopes, electron capture (EC) always produces -radiation, h. Hours min, minutes s, seconds. 

Fig. 1. Relationship between the energy of the a-particles emitted by astatine isotopes and their mass number (A) and neutron content (A — Z).

Identification and quantitation of the three main astatine isotopes, ° At, °At, and At, can be achieved by the appropriate measurement of a-, y-, or X-ray activity. X-rays and y-rays can be counted conveniently by well-type crystal counters, whereas a-counting requires that astatine samples be measured as infinitely thin or thick preparations. Astatine-211 can be measured by counting its 79- to 92-keV Po K-L,M,NX-rays, and, importantly, discriminated from At and ° At by their y-emissions (245, 1180 195, 545, and 782 keV, respectively). Identification and aspects of counting other astatine isotopes have been briefly discussed elsewhere (6,110). 

The more stable astatine isotopes may be synthesized in a nuclear reactor by bombarding bismuth with energenic alpha particles ... 

Astatination by means of nucleophilic halogen exchange, occasionally with the help of catalysts, and electrophilic replacement via demetalation seem to have become the preferred techniques. Short synthesis and separation time together with the possibility of carrier-free preparation of labelled compounds are especially important factors, bearing in mind the short half-life of astatine isotopes and the requirement of high specific activity for chemical and biomedical investigations. 

Short-lived astatine Isotopes produced in bismuth bombardment by a particles were extracted into diisopropyl ether after reduction to the elemental form by ferrous sulfate in hydrochloric acid solution (l4). 

The a-activity of a mixture of astatine isotopes was measured at different times after their separation. ... 

All isotopes of element 85, astatine, are intensely radioactive with very short half-lives (p. 795). As a consequence weighable amounts of the element or its compounds cannot be prepared and no bulk properties are known. The chemistry of the element must, of necessity, be studied by tracer techniques on extremely dilute solutions, and this introduces the risk of experimental errors and the consequent possibility of erroneous... 

Elements 43 (technetium), 61 (promethium), 85 (astatine), and all elements with Z > 92 do not exist naturally on the Earth, because no isotopes of these elements are stable. After the discovery of nuclear reactions early in the twentieth century, scientists set out to make these missing elements. Between 1937 and 1945, the gaps were filled and three actinides, neptunium (Z = 93), plutonium (Z = 94), and americium (Z = 95) also were made. 

The element exists as an intermediate in uranium and thorium minerals through their decay. There is no stable isotope. The longest-living isotope has a half-life of 8.3 hours. In the crust of the Earth, the total steady-state mass is estimated at a few tens of grams. Thus astatine is the rarest element (record ). A few atoms of this relative of iodine can be found in all uranium ore. It exhibits certain metallic properties. 

ISOTOPES All 41 isotopes of astatine are radioactive, with half-lives ranging from 125 nanoseconds to 8.1 hours. The isotope As-210, the most stable isotope with an 8.1-hour half-life, is used to determine the atomic weight of astatine. As-210 decays by alpha decay into bismuth-206 or by electron capture into polonium-210. 

Astatine is located just below iodine, which suggests that it should have some of the same chemical properties as iodine, even though it also acts more hke a metal or semimetal than does iodine. It is a fairly heavy element with an odd atomic number, which assisted chemists in learning more about this extremely rare element. The 41 isotopes are man-made in atomic reactors, and most exist for fractions of a second. The elements melting point is about 302°C, its boiling point is approximately 337°C, and its density is about 7g/cm. ... 

Chemists of the early twentieth century tried to find the existence of element 85, which was given the name eka-iodine by Mendeleev in order to fill the space for the missing element in the periodic table. Astatine is the rarest of all elements on Earth and is found in only trace amounts. Less than one ounce of natural astatine exists on the Earth at any one time. There would be no astatine on Earth if it were not for the small amounts that are replenished by the radioactive decay process of uranium ore. Astatine produced by this uranium radioactive decay process soon decays, so there is no long-term build up of astatine on Earth. The isotopes of astatine have very short half-lives, and less than a gram has ever been produced for laboratory study. 

Because of its isotopes short half-lives and its scarcity, astatine has few practical uses outside of the laboratory for research, where less than a gram has ever been produced. 

The major hazard is from the radiation of astatine s isotopes. However, given that these isotopes have very short half-lives, they do not pose a great long-term danger. Even so, astatine is considered a dangerous element that is a radioactive poison and carcinogen. It has been demonstrated that astatine causes cancer in laboratory animals. 

Preparation of the isotopes of astatine is more difficult than with most radionuclides, as they cannot be synthesized by neutron irradiation this precludes the use of a nuclear reactor. To date, the bulk of... 

Numerous nuclear reactions have been employed to produce astatine. Three of these are particularly suited for routine preparation of the relatively long-lived isotopes with mass numbers 209, 210, and 211. The most frequently used is the ° Bi(a,xn) At (a = 1-4) reaction, in which bismuth 44, 74,120) or bismuth oxide (7,125) is bombarded by 21-to 40-MeV a-particles. The ° Bi(He, xn) At reaction can also be used to produce isotopes of astatine 152), the nuclear excitation functions (62) favor a predominant yield of ° At and °At. The routine preparation of astatine is most conveniently carried out through the ° Bi(a,xn) At nuclear reactions, from which a limited spectrum of astatine nuclides may be derived. The excitation functions for these nuclear reactions have been studied extensively (78, 89, 120). The... 

Astatine, generally speaking, is a difficult isotope to study from a chemical viewpoint because no stable isotopes exist. Although the study of the chemical properties of astatine began over 40 years ago (44), the element s precise behavior is still in doubt. The chemical similarity between astatine and its nearest halogenic neighbor, iodine, is not always obvious. In many cases the astatine tracer has not... 

Astatination of the diazonium salt of 4-amino-methylene blue led to only 10% yield of 4-astato-methylene blue (VI). Alternatively, 4-astato-methylene blue was rapidly synthesized by heterogeneous nucleophilic isotopic exchange in the presence of 18-crown-6 ether at 80° C, with 4-iodo-methylene blue. The product was separated and identified by TLC yields ranged from 50 to 65% 41). Additionally, 2-astato-8-iodo-methylene blue (VII) has similarly been prepared in 60% yield from 2,8-diiodo-methylene blue 41). 

Astatine is one of the rarest elements in nature. Extremely small amounts of short-lived isotopes At-215, At-217, At-218 and At-219 are naturally found occurring in equilibrium with uranium, neptunium and thorium isotopes. The element was named hy Corson, MacKenzie and Segre who produced the first of its isotope At-211 in 1940 hy homharding bismuth with alpha particles. Since then many isotopes in the mass range 200 to 219 have been synthesized. All isotopes, however, are unstable, their half-lives ranging between a few microseconds to less than ten hours. The most stable ones are At-210, At-211 and At-209. No use of this element is known so far. 

Astatine, 6 207-223, 31 43-88 as astatate ion, 6 219-220 as astatide ion, properties of, 6 217-218 biochemical compounds of, 6 222 biochemical fate, 31 78 biological behavior, 6 222 31 77-78 biomedical applications, 31 79-83 therapeutic studies, 31 80-81 chemical properties of, 6 216 diatomic, 31 50 distallation, 31 47-48 elementary, 6 218-219 embryotoxicity, 31 78 extraction techniques, 31 47 identification, 31 49 in intermediate oxidation state, 6 219 iodide, 6 218-219 isotopes, 31 43-49 decay, 31 44 half-lives, 31 44 decay and half-lives of, 6 210 experimental methods for, 6 213-216 production and measurement of, 6 209-216... 

Astatine is highly radioactive and only produced and isolated in very small quantities isotope with the longest half-life (8.3 h) considered. 

Astatine (from the Greek astatos unstable) is highly unstable and radioactive. It was synthesized in 1940 by D. R. Corson, K. R. MacKenzie, and E. Segre at the University of California by bombarding bismuth with a-particles. The resulting 209-2iiy isotopes are relatively long-lived... 

In 1940 D. R. Corson, K. R. Mackenzie, and E. Segre at the University of California bombarded bismuth with alpha particles (26, 27). Preliminary tracer studies indicated that they had obtained element 85, which appeared to possess metallic properties. The pressure of war work prevented a continuation of these studies at the time. After the war, the investigators resumed their work, and in 1947 proposed the name astatine, symbol At, for their element. The name comes from the Greek word for unstable, since this element is the only halogen without stable isotopes (28). The longest lived isotope is At210 with a half-life of 8.3 hours and a very high activity. 

The halogens will be restricted to chlorine, bromine and iodine since fluorine, as the most electronegative element, does not function as the central atom in a complex and astatine has only short-lived, radioactive isotopes, so that very little of its coordination chemistry has been investigated.2 ... 

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