Gallium
Gallium is a metallic chemical element with the symbol Ga and atomic number 31. It is a soft, silvery blue metal that melts at a temperature of 30.2 °C (86.4 °F). Gallium is part of a group of elements referred to as the post-transition metals. It is found in nature as a trace element in trace amounts in bauxite, coal, and many other minerals.
Gallium is a very unusual element because it is not a solid at ordinary temperatures; it has a melting point of 29.76 °C (85.56 °F) and a boiling point of 2403 °C (4357 °F). This means that it is liquid at room temperature. In addition, its density is one-third of that of water, making it one of the least dense metals known. Gallium is highly conductive, so it is often used in electronics, particularly in transistors, integrated circuits and LED lighting.
Gallium is often used as an alloying ingredient in alloys, such as bismuth-gallium-tellurium, which has been used as a heat-resistant material for space rocket nozzles. It is also used in special nuclear radiation detectors, and various medical tracers. Further, it is used as a doping agent in semiconductors.
Gallium was discovered in 1875 by a French chemist, Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named it gallium, after the Latin word gallus, meaning “rooster. Gallium is the only element named after a living creature. Lecoq de Boisbaudran first identified it in gallium arsenide minerals.
Gallium is classified as a Group III Atomic Element. Its most common isotopes, gallium-68 and gallium-69, have extremely low natural abundances and therefore, relatively few applications have been found for them. However, because radioactive gallium has half-lives of only minutes or tens of minutes, making it exceedingly difficult to measure, some research has been conducted on their use in medical radiation detection.
The isotopic selection properties of gallium allow for heavy-ion spin filtering of a beam of rare isotope through a stopping chamber. In this technique, an incoming beam of any given nuclide is deflected from the normal path by an electric or magnetic field, leaving only those nuclei with an opposite spin as the original beam. Therefore, isolating a particular isotope can be achieved with a modestly low field.
Gallium-67 has been used in radioimmunotherapy in recent years as a gamma-emitting isotope called gallium-67 citrate. Gallium-67 citrate has been used to successfully treat cancerous cells in many cases. Its radiation is said to be absorbed more readily by cancer cells, while normal host tissue is more resistant to the radiation and therefore is left unharmed in the process.
The production of gallium involves electrolysis. This process occurs when gallium chloride or gallium bromide is electrolyzed in an aqueous solution with an electrolyte. This process produces gallium in liquid form, which is then processed and crystallized. Finally, the crystalized gallium is purified for use in various applications.
In conclusion, the element gallium has many important uses due to its peculiar physical and chemical properties. It is a soft, silvery-blue metal that has a melting point of 29.76 °C (85.56 °F) and a boiling point of 2403 °C (4357 °F). It can be found in trace amounts in bauxite and other minerals, and it is widely used in electronics and alloys. In addition, its isotopes can be used for medical radiation detection and radioimmunotherapy. Finally, gallium is produced via electrolysis, crystallized and purified for use in various applications.
