Iron-57 — LLMpedia

Iron-57
Name	Iron-57
Mass number	57
Atomic number	26
Half life	Stable (observationally long-lived)
Abundance	~2.119%

Contents

Iron-57 is a stable isotope of iron known for its role in nuclear spectroscopy, geochemistry, and condensed matter studies. It features prominently in techniques that probe hyperfine interactions and lattice dynamics used by researchers at institutions such as CERN, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Society, California Institute of Technology, and MIT. Its unique nuclear properties make it a standard in experiments across facilities like Brookhaven National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Stanford University, and Harvard University.

Properties

Iron-57 exhibits nuclear properties exploited in Mossbauer spectroscopy and neutron scattering experiments conducted at centers such as ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, Spallation Neutron Source, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Diamond Light Source, and Paul Scherrer Institute. Crystallographers at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory utilize its isotopic composition in studies of phase transitions in materials developed by teams from IBM Research, Siemens, General Electric, and Boeing Research & Technology. Geochemists working with samples from Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, and US Geological Survey use its isotopic signature to trace processes in planetary materials analyzed in collaboration with missions like Voyager program, Apollo program, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Cassini–Huygens, and New Horizons.

The nucleus of this isotope has a nonzero nuclear spin and a low-lying excited state that enables recoil-free gamma emission exploited by researchers at Mossbauer Society-affiliated groups and laboratories at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, Yale University, and Princeton University. Nuclear physicists at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, RIKEN, TRIUMF, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, and Kurchatov Institute study its hyperfine magnetic interactions and electric quadrupole moments in experiments analogous to those performed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Forschungszentrum Jülich. Its decay channels are effectively absent on experimental timescales, which has been characterized by teams led from Imperial College London, Columbia University, Duke University, University of Tokyo, and Seoul National University.

Natural sources of iron containing this isotope include terrestrial ores processed by companies such as Rio Tinto Group, BHP, Vale S.A., ArcelorMittal, and Tata Steel. Isotopic enrichment for research is carried out by facilities using centrifuge or mass-separation technology developed at AECL, URENCO, Orano, Areva, Savannah River Site, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Measurements of its abundance in meteorites and lunar samples have been published by researchers affiliated with Jet Propulsion Laboratory, European Space Agency, NASA, Indian Space Research Organisation, and China National Space Administration. Cosmochemical studies by teams from Carnegie Institution for Science, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Field Museum relate its abundance to nucleosynthesis processes in events such as Type Ia supernovae, Core-collapse supernova, Asymptotic giant branch star, Wolf–Rayet star, and Neutron star merger.

This isotope is central to Mössbauer spectroscopy methods used by materials scientists at National Institute of Standards and Technology, Institut Laue–Langevin, Tohoku University, ETH Zurich, and Eindhoven University of Technology to study magnetism, corrosion, and catalysis in systems developed by Johnson & Johnson, BASF, Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, and Bayer AG. Archaeometallurgists at British Museum, National Museum of China, Vatican Museums, Pergamon Museum, and Louvre Museum apply isotopic analyses to provenance studies, while battery researchers at Tesla, Inc., Panasonic, LG Chem, Samsung SDI, and CATL investigate iron-based electrodes incorporating this isotope. In biology and medicine, tracer studies and hyperfine probes at National Institutes of Health, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Johns Hopkins Hospital explore iron metabolism and heme systems using enriched samples.

High-resolution Mossbauer spectroscopy and nuclear resonance techniques employing this isotope are routine at synchrotron and neutron centers such as European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Advanced Photon Source, SPring-8, Canadian Light Source, and National Synchrotron Light Source II. Instrumentation and analysis protocols have been standardized through collaborations among International Union of Crystallography, American Physical Society, Royal Society, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Analysts from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Weizmann Institute of Science, Tsinghua University, and Zhejiang University employ techniques including nuclear resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, Mössbauer spectroscopy, and perturbed angular correlation to obtain hyperfine fields, isomer shifts, and Debye temperatures relevant to materials from BASF, Siemens Energy, Hitachi, NEC Corporation, and Honeywell.

Category:Isotopes of iron