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Germanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid or a nonmetal in the carbon group that is chemically similar to silicon. Like silicon, germanium naturally reacts and forms complexes with oxygen in nature.
It melts at 938 °C. Germanium is a semiconductor with an electrical conductivity of around 2 × 10 −2 S•cm −1 [306] and a band gap of 0.67 eV. [308] Liquid germanium is a metallic conductor, with an electrical conductivity similar to that of liquid mercury. [309] Most of the chemistry of germanium is characteristic of a nonmetal. [310]
Germanium (32 Ge) has five naturally occurring isotopes, 70 Ge, 72 Ge, 73 Ge, 74 Ge, and 76 Ge. Of these, 76 Ge is very slightly radioactive, decaying by double beta decay with a half-life of 1.78 × 10 21 years [4] (130 billion times the age of the universe). Stable 74 Ge is the most common isotope, having a natural abundance of approximately 36%.
On average, germanium makes up 1 part per million of soil. Germanium makes up 0.5 parts per trillion of seawater. Organogermanium compounds are also found in seawater. Germanium occurs in the human body at concentrations of 71.4 parts per billion. Germanium has been found to exist in some very faraway stars. [18]
Like the periodic table, the list below organizes the elements by the number of protons in their atoms; it can also be organized by other properties, such as atomic weight, density, and electronegativity. For more detailed information about the origins of element names, see List of chemical element name etymologies.
As a result, element 173 is expected to behave chemically like an alkali metal, and one that might be far more reactive than even caesium (francium and element 119 being less reactive than caesium due to relativistic effects): [90] [19] the calculated ionisation energy for element 173 is 3.070 eV, [91] compared to the experimentally known 3.894 ...
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The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows ("periods") and columns ("groups"). It is an icon of chemistry and is widely used in physics and other sciences.