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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]
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 only stable nuclides having an odd number of protons and an odd number of neutrons are hydrogen-2, lithium-6, boron-10, nitrogen-14 and (observationally) tantalum-180m. This is because the mass–energy of such atoms is usually higher than that of their neighbors on the same isobaric chain, so most of them are unstable to beta decay .
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.
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]
The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element.
For an ordinary atom which contains protons, neutrons and electrons, the sum of the atomic number Z and the neutron number N gives the atom's atomic mass number A. Since protons and neutrons have approximately the same mass (and the mass of the electrons is negligible for many purposes) and the mass defect of the nucleon binding is always small ...
There is a general trend of increasing stability for isotopes with a greater neutron excess (N − Z, the difference in the number of protons and neutrons), especially in elements 110, 112, and 114, which strongly suggests that the center of the island of stability lies among even heavier isotopes.