Oxygen-20 is a radioisotope of the chemical element oxygen, which has 12 neutrons in its atomic nucleus in addition to the element-specific 8 protons; the sum of the number of these atomic nucleus building blocks results in a mass number of 20. The very short-lived, only artificially produced, unstable and thus radioactive nuclide has no practical significance; the study of 20O is exclusively for academic purposes and experimental research.
The discovery of the radioactive isotope was reported in 1959: According to it, oxygen-20 was produced by irradiating enriched oxygen-18 gas with tritons - Hydrogen-3 nuclei accelerated to 2.6 MeV:
18O(t,p)20O.
See also: list of Oxygen isotopes.
Half-life T½ = 13.51(5) s respectively 1.351 × 101 seconds s.
Decay mode | Daughter | Probability | Decay energy | Details | γ energy (intensity) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
β- | 20F | 100 % | 3.8136(9) MeV | β-: 1.1977(10) MeV [99.973(3) %] | 1.05678(3) MeV [99.975(3) %] |
Direct parent isotopes are: 20N, 21N.
Z | Isotone N = 12 | Isobar A = 20 |
---|---|---|
4 | 16Be | |
5 | 17B | 20B |
6 | 18C | 20C |
7 | 19N | 20N |
8 | 20O | 20O |
9 | 21F | 20F |
10 | 22Ne | 20Ne |
11 | 23Na | 20Na |
12 | 24Mg | 20Mg |
13 | 25Al | |
14 | 26Si | |
15 | 27P | |
16 | 28S | |
17 | 29Cl | |
18 | 30Ar |
[1] - Nelson Jarmie, Myron G. Silbert:
Oxygen-20.
In: Physical Review Letters, 3, 50, (1959), DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.3.50.
Last update: 2024-10-09
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