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Hafnium Isotopes

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Encyclopedia of Geochemistry

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Introduction

Hafnium consists of the five stable isotopes 176Hf, 177Hf, 178Hf, 179Hf, and 180Hf. Of these, ~1 % of 176Hf is radiogenic (the rest being “common” Hf created during nucleosynthesis), produced by the beta decay of radioactive 176Lu with a half-life of ~37 Ga. In addition, radioactive 182Hf, with a half-life of 8.9 Ma, was present in the early Solar System, leading to variable abundances of its daughter 182W in the Earth and in Solar System materials. Together, 176Lu and 176Hf constitute the long-lived Lu-Hf chronometer in which variations in 176Hf resulting from the decay of 176Lu, combined with variations in the Lu/Hf ratio of rocks and minerals, are used to date these rocks and minerals, track the chemical evolution and differentiation of the Earth, Moon, and other planetary bodies and materials of the Solar System, and constrain the nature of magma sources and the provenance of sediments.

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The Lu-Hf isotope system with applications to tracer isotope geochemistry,...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, 69007, Lyon, France

    Janne Blichert-Toft

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  1. Janne Blichert-Toft
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Correspondence to Janne Blichert-Toft .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Cornell University Department of Earth, Ithaca, New York, USA

    William M. White

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Blichert-Toft, J. (2016). Hafnium Isotopes. In: White, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geochemistry. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39193-9_224-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39193-9_224-1

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