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Thallium

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Geochemistry

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

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FormalPara Element Data

Atomic Symbol: Tl

Atomic Number: 81

Atomic Weight: 204.3833 (2)

Isotopes and Abundances: 203Tl (29.524%) and 205Tl (70.476%)

1 Atm Melting Point: 577 K

1 Atm Boiling Point: 1746 K

Common Valences: +1 and +3

Ionic Radii: 164 pm (+1), 102.5 pm (+3)

Pauling Electronegativity: 1.62

First Ionization Energy: 589.4 kJ mol−1

Chondritic (CI) Abundance: 0.143 ppm

Silicate Earth Abundance: 0.004 ppm

Crustal Abundance: 0.5 ppm

Seawater Abundance: 10–20 ng/l

Core Abundance: 0.03 ppm

Introduction

Thallium (Tl) is a soft blue-grey metal that is present in trace quantities in the Earth’s crust and is highly toxic either as a metal or as one of many compounds. It was first discovered in 1861 by William Crookes, and Tl metal was first isolated in 1862 by both Crookes and Claude-August Lamy (Peter and Viraraghavan 2005). Thallium has an atomic number of 81, atomic weight of 204.37, and is in group 13 of the periodic table. It has two oxidation states...

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References

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Acknowledgments

Prepared by LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

    Josh Wimpenny

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  1. Josh Wimpenny
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Correspondence to Josh Wimpenny .

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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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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Wimpenny, J. (2016). Thallium. In: White, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geochemistry. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39193-9_52-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39193-9_52-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39193-9

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