Technetium compounds

Technetium is a chemical element with the symbol Tc and atomic number 43. It is the lightest element whose isotopes are all radioactive; none are stable, excluding the fully ionized state of 97Tc. Nearly all technetium is produced as a synthetic element, and only about 18,000 tons can be found at any given time in the Earth's crust. Naturally occurring technetium is a spontaneous fission product in uranium ore and thorium ore, the most common source, or the product of neutron capture in molybdenum ores. This silvery gray, crystalline transition metal lies between manganese and rhenium in group 7 of the periodic table, and its chemical properties are intermediate between those of these two adjacent elements. The most common naturally occurring isotope is 99Tc. Technetium is a chemical element with the symbol Tc and atomic number 43. It is the lightest element whose isotopes are all radioactive; none are stable, excluding the fully ionized state of 97Tc. Nearly all technetium is produced as a synthetic element, and only about 18,000 tons can be found at any given time in the Earth's crust. Naturally occurring technetium is a spontaneous fission product in uranium ore and thorium ore, the most common source, or the product of neutron capture in molybdenum ores. This silvery gray, crystalline transition metal lies between manganese and rhenium in group 7 of the periodic table, and its chemical properties are intermediate between those of these two adjacent elements. The most common naturally occurring isotope is 99Tc. Many of technetium's properties were predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev before the element was discovered. Mendeleev noted a gap in his periodic table and gave the undiscovered element the provisional name ekamanganese (Em). In 1937, technetium (specifically the technetium-97 isotope) became the first predominantly artificial element to be produced, hence its name (from the Greek τεχνητός, meaning 'synthetic or artificial', + -ium). One short-lived gamma ray-emitting nuclear isomer of technetium—technetium-99m—is used in nuclear medicine for a wide variety of diagnostic tests, such as bone cancer diagnoses. The ground state of this nuclide, technetium-99, is used as a gamma-ray-free source of beta particles. Long-lived technetium isotopes produced commercially are by-products of the fission of uranium-235 in nuclear reactors and are extracted from nuclear fuel rods. Because no isotope of technetium has a half-life longer than 4.21 million years (technetium-97), the 1952 detection of technetium in red giants helped to prove that stars can produce heavier elements. From the 1860s through 1871, early forms of the periodic table proposed by Dmitri Mendeleev contained a gap between molybdenum (element 42) and ruthenium (element 44). In 1871, Mendeleev predicted this missing element would occupy the empty place below manganese and have similar chemical properties. Mendeleev gave it the provisional name ekamanganese (from eka-, the Sanskrit word for one) because the predicted element was one place down from the known element manganese.