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Physical Properties: Zinc Is A

Zinc is a bluish-white metal that is the 24th most abundant element in Earth's crust. It has five stable isotopes with 64Zn being the most common. Zinc's main ore is sphalerite, a zinc sulfide mineral, and the largest deposits are found in Australia, Asia, and the United States. Zinc plays an important nutritional role as an essential mineral for humans and animals.

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68 views2 pages

Physical Properties: Zinc Is A

Zinc is a bluish-white metal that is the 24th most abundant element in Earth's crust. It has five stable isotopes with 64Zn being the most common. Zinc's main ore is sphalerite, a zinc sulfide mineral, and the largest deposits are found in Australia, Asia, and the United States. Zinc plays an important nutritional role as an essential mineral for humans and animals.

Uploaded by

Vinod Nair
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30.

Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room


temperature and has a blue-silvery appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 of
the periodic table. In some respects, zinc is chemically similar to magnesium: both elements exhibit only one
normal oxidation state (+2), and the Zn2+ and Mg2+ ions are of similar size. Zinc is the 24th most abundant element
in Earth's crust and has five stable isotopes. The most common zinc ore is sphalerite (zinc blende), a zinc
sulfide mineral. The largest workable lodes are in Australia, Asia, and the United States. Zinc is refined by froth
flotation of the ore, roasting, and final extraction using electricity (electrowinning).
Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc in various proportions, was used as early as the third millennium BC in
the Aegean, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kalmykia, Turkmenistan and Georgia, and the second millennium
BC in West India, Uzbekistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine.[3][4][5] Zinc metal was not produced on a large
scale until the 12th century in India, though it was known to the ancient Romans and Greeks.[6] The mines
of Rajasthan have given definite evidence of zinc production going back to the 6th century BC.[7] To date, the
oldest evidence of pure zinc comes from Zawar, in Rajasthan, as early as the 9th century AD when a distillation
process was employed to make pure zinc.[8] Alchemists burned zinc in air to form what they called "philosopher's
wool" or "white snow".
The element was probably named by the alchemist Paracelsus after the German word Zinke (prong, tooth).
German chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf is credited with discovering pure metallic zinc in 1746. Work
by Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta uncovered the electrochemical properties of zinc by 1800. Corrosion-
resistant zinc plating of iron (hot-dip galvanizing) is the major application for zinc. Other applications are in
electrical batteries, small non-structural castings, and alloys such as brass. A variety of zinc compounds are
commonly used, such as zinc carbonate and zinc gluconate (as dietary supplements), zinc chloride (in
deodorants), zinc pyrithione (anti-dandruff shampoos), zinc sulfide (in luminescent paints),
and dimethylzinc or diethylzinc in the organic laboratory.
Zinc is an essential mineral, including to prenatal and postnatal development.[9] Zinc deficiency affects about two
billion people in the developing world and is associated with many diseases.[10] In children, deficiency causes
growth retardation, delayed sexual maturation, infection susceptibility, and diarrhea.[9] Enzymes with a zinc atom
in the reactive center are widespread in biochemistry, such as alcohol dehydrogenase in humans.[11]
Consumption of excess zinc may cause ataxia, lethargy, and copper deficiency.

Physical properties[edit]
Zinc is a bluish-white, lustrous, diamagnetic metal,[12] though most common commercial grades of the metal have
a dull finish.[13] It is somewhat less dense than iron and has a hexagonal crystal structure, with a distorted form
of hexagonal close packing, in which each atom has six nearest neighbors (at 265.9 pm) in its own plane and six
others at a greater distance of 290.6 pm.[14] The metal is hard and brittle at most temperatures but becomes
malleable between 100 and 150 °C.[12][13] Above 210 °C, the metal becomes brittle again and can be pulverized by
beating.[15] Zinc is a fair conductor of electricity.[12] For a metal, zinc has relatively low melting (419.5 °C) and
boiling points (907 °C).[16] The melting point is the lowest of all the d-block metals aside
from mercury and cadmium; for this, among other reasons, zinc, cadmium, and mercury are often not considered
to be transition metals like the rest of the d-block metals.[16]
Many alloys contain zinc, including brass. Other metals long known to form binary alloys with zinc
are aluminium, antimony, bismuth, gold, iron, lead, mercury, silver, tin, magnesium, cobalt, nickel, tellurium,
and sodium.[17] Although neither zinc nor zirconium is ferromagnetic, their alloy ZrZn
2 exhibits ferromagnetism below 35 K.
[12]

A bar of zinc generates a characteristic sound when bent, similar to tin cry.

Occurrence[edit]
See also: Zinc minerals

Zinc makes up about 75 ppm (0.0075%) of Earth's crust, making it the 24th most abundant element. Soil contains
zinc in 5–770 ppm with an average 64 ppm. Seawater has only 30 ppb and the atmosphere, 0.1–4 µg/m3.[18] The
element is normally found in association with other base metals such as copper and lead in ores.[19] Zinc is
a chalcophile, meaning the element is more likely to be found in minerals together with sulfur and other
heavy chalcogens, rather than with the light chalcogen oxygen or with non-chalcogen electronegative elements
such as the halogens. Sulfides formed as the crust solidified under the reducing conditions of the early Earth's
atmosphere.[20] Sphalerite, which is a form of zinc sulfide, is the most heavily mined zinc-containing ore because
its concentrate contains 60–62% zinc.[19]
Other source minerals for zinc
include smithsonite (zinc carbonate), hemimorphite (zinc silicate), wurtzite (another zinc sulfide), and
sometimes hydrozincite (basic zinc carbonate).[21] With the exception of wurtzite, all these other minerals were
formed by weathering of the primordial zinc sulfides.[20]
Identified world zinc resources total about 1.9–2.8 billion tonnes.[22][23] Large deposits are in Australia, Canada and
the United States, with the largest reserves in Iran.[20][24][25] The most recent estimate of reserve base for zinc
(meets specified minimum physical criteria related to current mining and production practices) was made in 2009
and calculated to be roughly 480 Mt.[26] Zinc reserves, on the other hand, are geologically identified ore bodies
whose suitability for recovery is economically based (location, grade, quality, and quantity) at the time of
determination. Since exploration and mine development is an ongoing process, the amount of zinc reserves is
not a fixed number and sustainability of zinc ore supplies cannot be judged by simply extrapolating the combined
mine life of today's zinc mines. This concept is well supported by data from the United States Geological Survey
(USGS), which illustrates that although refined zinc production increased 80% between 1990 and 2010, the
reserve lifetime for zinc has remained unchanged. About 346 million tonnes have been extracted throughout
history to 2002, and scholars have estimated that about 109–305 million tonnes are in use.

Isotopes[edit]
Main article: Isotopes of zinc

Five stable isotopes of zinc occur in nature, with 64Zn being the most abundant isotope (49.17% natural
abundance).[30][31] The other isotopes found in nature are 66
Zn (27.73%), 67
Zn (4.04%), 68
Zn (18.45%), and 70
Zn (0.61%).[31] The most abundant isotope 64Zn and the rare 70Zn are theoretically unstable on energetic grounds,
though their predicted half-lives exceed 4.3×1018 years[32] and 1.3×1016 years,[31] meaning that their radioactivity
could be ignored for practical purposes.
Several dozen radioisotopes have been characterized. 65
Zn, which has a half-life of 243.66 days, is the least active radioisotope, followed by 72
Zn with a half-life of 46.5 hours.[30] Zinc has 10 nuclear isomers. 69mZn has the longest half-life, 13.76 h.[30] The
superscript m indicates a metastable isotope. The nucleus of a metastable isotope is in an excited state and will
return to the ground state by emitting a photon in the form of a gamma ray. 61
Zn has three excited metastable states and 73
Zn has two.[33] The isotopes 65
Zn, 71
Zn, 77
Zn and 78
Zn each have only one excited metastable state.[30]
The most common decay mode of a radioisotope of zinc with a mass number lower than 66 is electron capture.
The decay product resulting from electron capture is an isotope of copper.[30]
n

30Zn
 + 
e−
 → n
29Cu

The most common decay mode of a radioisotope of zinc with mass number higher than 66 is beta
decay (β−), which produces an isotope of gallium.[30]

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