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Say you have a chemical compound made up of one or more radioactive nuclei. If these nucleus decay, does the compound decay as well?

Possible outcomes I can think of:

  1. the compounds continues to exist if a bonding is still possible between the decay product and the rest of the original compound.

  2. the compound just ceases to exist.

  3. the decay product forms a new compound with some fraction of the remainder of the original one but discards some other part.

Generally, it will do whatever results in the least energetic state, but is there some kind of regularity to it?

Thermo's Second Law
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luksen
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2 Answers2

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To deduce this, You have to specify the kind of decay and the nature of the "compund" is it a crystal, a small molecule in gas phase, a organic material?

Beta decay shifts the nucleus one position upward in PSE, thus any "compound" will be transformed into a cation by loss of an electron, and whre say a iodide Ion had been, there will be an Xe atom. (which will not "fit" chemically of course)

There will be some recoil in this process, which can cause the nucleus to leave its place.

The electron will ionize everything along its path, those products of ionisation can alter/ destroy the molecule (compound) where the electron was emitted.

Similar is the case of alpha, with a strong recoil and severly ionisation. The decaying nucleus is shifted two "down" in PSE. The alpha particle will stay in the crystal, if it is big enough. Think of Helium gassing out of Pechblende when heated.

For Gamma, recoil will be less, ionisation is distributed along a long path (maybe meters)

There are special cases in crystals, when the recoil is taken not by the emitting nucleus alone, but collectively ba the crystal lattice. (Mößbauer effect)

In general, radioactive decay is so energetic, that any chemical bonds/lattice forces are broken. What happens then is very complicated and not to be answered by a simple scheme.

Georg
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Take the instance of radioactive material like 131-I. Some atoms called excited atoms emit ionizing radiations. After ionizing radiation emission, those excited 131-I atoms become 131-Xe atoms. These excited remain in between stable iodine atoms. These stable iodine atoms remain unchanged.

M.A. Padmanabha Rao
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