isotopesGe70

Germanium-70 (Ge-70) is a stable isotope of the element germanium, which has 32 protons and a mass number of 70, corresponding to 38 neutrons. It is one of the five stable germanium isotopes, the others being Ge-72, Ge-73, Ge-74, and Ge-76. In natural germanium, Ge-70 constitutes about one-fifth of the elemental abundance, with the rest distributed among the other stable isotopes.

As a stable nuclide, Ge-70 does not undergo radioactive decay and has no observed half-life in nature. Its stability contributes to the overall isotopic composition of germanium found in rocks, minerals, and planetary materials. The precise abundances of germanium isotopes, including Ge-70, are used in geochemical and cosmochemical analyses to study processes such as planetary differentiation and the history of the solar system.

Ge-70 can be formed in stellar environments through slow neutron capture (the s-process) and is inherited in stellar yields that contribute to the solar system’s elemental makeup. In laboratory settings, germanium isotopes including Ge-70 are involved in isotope dilution and mass spectrometry analyses to determine geochemical signatures of samples. Isotopic enrichment techniques can selectively increase the proportion of Ge-70 for research applications, though Ge-70 is primarily encountered as a natural, stable constituent of germanium.

Overall, Ge-70 is a stable, naturally occurring isotope that plays a routine role in studies of germanium’s isotopic composition and in applications requiring precise isotopic analyses.