Technetium - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technetium is a radioactive chemical element that has the chemical symbol Tc and has the atomic number 43. It is the lightest synthetic element.

Chemistry of Technetium[change | change source]

The color of technetium is silvery-grey and is a crystaline metal. In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the transition metals. The chemistry of technetium is similar to rhenium and manganese.

The isotope ^99mTc is used in nuclear medicine. It is used for many diagnostic tests. It has a short half-life. ⁹⁹Tc is used as a source of beta particles without emitting gamma rays. The ion that has oxygen and technetium bonded together (TcO₄^-) is named the pertechnetate ion. The pertechnetate ion could be used as to prevent anodic corrosion in steel.

History[change | change source]

Before the element was found, many of the properties of element 43 were predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev. Mendeleev noticed a gap in his periodic table and named the element in the gap eka-manganese. In 1937 the technetium isotope ⁹⁷Tc was the first element to be artificially produced. This was the reason why he named it Technetium as in Greek, τεχνητος means "artificial". Most technetium made on Earth is a by-product of fission of uranium-235 in nuclear reactors. It is extracted from nuclear fuel rods. On earth, technetium occurs naturally only in uranium ores as a product of spontaneous fission. The amount of technetium in the ore is very small but has been measured. The longest half-life of Technetium is 4.2 million years (⁹⁸Tc). This means that its detection in red giants in 1952 helped support the theory that stars can produce heavier elements.

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