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Natural iron (26 Fe) consists of four stable isotopes: 5.845% 54 Fe (possibly radioactive with half-life > 4.4 × 10 20 years), [4] 91.754% 56 Fe, 2.119% 57 Fe and 0.286% 58 Fe. There are 28 known radioisotopes and 8 nuclear isomers, the most stable of which are 60 Fe (half-life 2.6 million years) and 55 Fe (half-life 2.7 years).
The rarer isotopes nickel-62 and iron-58, which both have higher binding energies, are not shown. Iron-56 (56 Fe) is the most common isotope of iron. About 91.754% of all iron is iron-56. Of all nuclides, iron-56 has the lowest mass per nucleon. With 8.8 MeV binding energy per nucleon, iron-56 is one of the most tightly bound nuclei. [1]
Since a nucleus with an odd number of protons is relatively less stable, odd-numbered elements tend to have fewer stable isotopes. Of the 26 "monoisotopic" elements that have only a single stable isotope, all but one have an odd atomic number—the single exception being beryllium. In addition, no odd-numbered element has more than two stable ...
For very small atomic mass number (H, He, Li), binding energy per nucleon is small, and this energy increases rapidly with atomic mass number. Nickel-62 (28 protons, 34 neutrons) has the highest mean binding energy of all nuclides, while iron-58 (26 protons, 32 neutrons) and iron-56 (26 protons, 30 neutrons) are a close second and third. [ 13 ]
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For other isotopes, the isotopic mass is usually within 0.1 u of the mass number. For example, 35 Cl (17 protons and 18 neutrons) has a mass number of 35 and an isotopic mass of 34.96885. [7] The difference of the actual isotopic mass minus the mass number of an atom is known as the mass excess, [8] which for 35 Cl is –0.03115.
Isotopes of lithium, beryllium, and boron are less strongly bound than helium, as shown by their increasing mass-to-mass number ratios. At carbon, the ratio of mass (in daltons) to mass number is defined as 1, and after carbon it becomes less than one until a minimum is reached at iron-56 (with only slightly higher values for iron-58 and nickel ...
The nominal mass is not always the lowest mass number, for example iron has isotopes 54 Fe, 56 Fe, 57 Fe, and 58 Fe with abundances 6%, 92%, 2%, and 0.3%, respectively, and a nominal mass of 56 Da.