Isotopes of nickel

Naturally occurring Nickel (Ni) is composed of 5 stable isotopes; ⁵⁸Ni, ⁶⁰Ni, ⁶¹Ni, ⁶²Ni and ⁶⁴Ni with ⁵⁸Ni being the most abundant (68.077% natural abundance). 18 radioisotopes have been characterised with the most stable being ⁵⁹Ni with a half-life of 76,000 years, ⁶³Ni with a half-life of 100.1 years, and ⁵⁶Ni with a half-life of 6.077 days. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 60 hours and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 30 seconds. This element also has 1 meta state.

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Nickel-56 is produced in large quantities in type Ia supernovae and the shape of the light curve of these supernovae corresponds to the decay of nickel-56 to cobalt-56 and then to iron-56.

Nickel-59 is a long-lived cosmogenic radionuclide with a half-life of 76,000 years. ⁵⁹Ni has found many applications in isotope geology. ⁵⁹Ni has been used to date the terrestrial age of meteorites and to determine abundances of extraterrestrial dust in ice and sediment. Nickel-60 is the daughter product of the extinct radionuclide ⁶⁰Fe (half-life = 1.5 Myr). Because the extinct radionuclide ⁶⁰Fe had such a long half-life, its persistence in materials in the solar system at high enough concentrations may have generated observable variations in the isotopic composition of ⁶⁰Ni. Therefore, the abundance of ⁶⁰Ni present in extraterrestrial material may provide insight into the origin of the solar system and its early history.

Nickel-62 has the highest binding energy per nucleon of any isotope for any element. Isotopes heavier than ⁶²Ni cannot be formed by nuclear fusion without losing energy.

Nickel-48, discovered in 1999, is the most proton-rich nickel isotope known . With 28 protons and 20 neutrons ⁴⁸Ni is "doubly magic" (like ²⁰⁸Pb) and therefore unusually stable ^[1].

The isotopes of nickel range in atomic weight from 48 u (48-Ni) to 78 u (78-Ni). Nickel-78's half-life was recently measured to be 110 milliseconds and is believed to be an important isotope involved in supernova nucleosynthesis of elements heavier than iron. [1]
Standard atomic mass: 58.6934(2) u

Table

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

• Isotope masses from Ame2003 Atomic Mass Evaluation by G. Audi, A.H. Wapstra, C. Thibault, J. Blachot and O. Bersillon in Nuclear Physics A729 (2003).
• Isotopic compositions and standard atomic masses from Atomic weights of the elements. Review 2000 (IUPAC Technical Report). Pure Appl. Chem. Vol. 75, No. 6, pp. 683-800, (2003) and Atomic Weights Revised (2005).
• Half-life, spin, and isomer data selected from these sources. Editing notes on this article's talk page.
  • Audi, Bersillon, Blachot, Wapstra. The Nubase2003 evaluation of nuclear and decay properties, Nuc. Phys. A 729, pp. 3-128 (2003).
  • National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory. Information extracted from the NuDat 2.1 database (retrieved Sept. 2005).
  • David R. Lide (ed.), Norman E. Holden in CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 85th Edition, online version. CRC Press. Boca Raton, Florida (2005). Section 11, Table of the Isotopes.