Astatine is a chemical element with the symbol At and atomic number 85.

It is the
rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust, occurring only as the
decay product of various heavier elements. All of astatine's isotopes are short-
lived; the most stable is astatine-210, with a half-life of 8.1 hours.
Consequently, a solid sample of the element has never been seen, because any
macroscopic specimen would be immediately vaporized by the heat of its
radioactivity.

The bulk properties of astatine are not known with certainty. Many of them have
been estimated from its position on the periodic table as a heavier analog of
iodine, and a member of the halogens (the group of elements including fluorine,
chlorine, bromine, iodine and tennessine). However, astatine also falls roughly
along the dividing line between metals and nonmetals, and some metallic behavior
has also been observed and predicted for it. Astatine is likely to have a dark or
lustrous appearance and may be a semiconductor or possibly a metal. Chemically,
several anionic species of astatine are known and most of its compounds resemble
those of iodine, but it also sometimes displays metallic characteristics and shows
some similarities to silver.

The first synthesis of astatine was in 1940 by Dale R. Corson, Kenneth Ross
MacKenzie, and Emilio G. Segrè at the University of California, Berkeley. They
named it from the Ancient Greek ἄστατος (astatos) 'unstable'. Four isotopes of
astatine were subsequently found to be naturally occurring, although much less than
one gram is present at any given time in the Earth's crust. Neither the most stable
isotope, astatine-210, nor the medically useful astatine-211 occur naturally; they
are usually produced by bombarding bismuth-209 with alpha particles.

Characteristics
Astatine is an extremely radioactive element; all its isotopes have half-lives of
8.1 hours or less, decaying into other astatine isotopes, bismuth, polonium, or
radon. Most of its isotopes are very unstable, with half-lives of seconds or less.
Of the first 101 elements in the periodic table, only francium is less stable, and
all the astatine isotopes more stable than the longest-lived francium isotopes are
in any case synthetic and do not occur in nature.[6]

The bulk properties of astatine are not known with any certainty.[7] Research is
limited by its short half-life, which prevents the creation of weighable
quantities.[8] A visible piece of astatine would immediately vaporize itself
because of the heat generated by its intense radioactivity.[9] It remains to be
seen if, with sufficient cooling, a macroscopic quantity of astatine could be
deposited as a thin film.[4] Astatine is usually classified as either a nonmetal or
a metalloid;[10][11] metal formation has also been predicted.[4][12]

Physical
Most of the physical properties of astatine have been estimated (by interpolation
or extrapolation), using theoretically or empirically derived methods.[13] For
example, halogens get darker with increasing atomic weight – fluorine is nearly
colorless, chlorine is yellow-green, bromine is red-brown, and iodine is dark
gray/violet. Astatine is sometimes described as probably being a black solid
(assuming it follows this trend), or as having a metallic appearance (if it is a
metalloid or a metal).[14][15][16]

Astatine sublimes less readily than does iodine, having a lower vapor pressure.[8]
Even so, half of a given quantity of astatine will vaporize in approximately an
hour if put on a clean glass surface at room temperature.[a] The absorption
spectrum of astatine in the middle ultraviolet region has lines at 224.401 and
216.225 nm, suggestive of 6p to 7s transitions.[18][19]

The structure of solid astatine is unknown.[20] As an analog of iodine it may have

an orthorhombic crystalline structure composed of diatomic astatine molecules, and
be a semiconductor (with a band gap of 0.7 eV).[21][22] Alternatively, if condensed
astatine forms a metallic phase, as has been predicted, it may have a monatomic
face-centered cubic structure; in this structure, it may well be a superconductor,
like the similar high-pressure phase of iodine.[4] Metallic astatine is expected to
have a density of 8.91–8.95 g/cm3.[1]

Evidence for (or against) the existence of diatomic astatine (At2) is sparse and
inconclusive.[23][24][25][26][27] Some sources state that it does not exist, or at
least has never been observed,[28][29] while other sources assert or imply its
existence.[30][31][32] Despite this controversy, many properties of diatomic
astatine have been predicted;[33] for example, its bond length would be 300±10 pm,
dissociation energy 83.7±12.5 kJ/mol,[34] and heat of vaporization (∆Hvap) 54.39
kJ/mol.[35] Many values have been predicted for the melting and boiling points of
astatine, but only for At2.[36]

Chemical
The chemistry of astatine is "clouded by the extremely low concentrations at which
astatine experiments have been conducted, and the possibility of reactions with
impurities, walls and filters, or radioactivity by-products, and other unwanted
nano-scale interactions".[21] Many of its apparent chemical properties have been
observed using tracer studies on extremely dilute astatine solutions,[32][37]
typically less than 10−10 mol·L−1.[38] Some properties, such as anion formation,
align with other halogens.[8] Astatine has some metallic characteristics as well,
such as plating onto a cathode,[b] and coprecipitating with metal sulfides in
hydrochloric acid.[40] It forms complexes with EDTA, a metal chelating agent,[41]
and is capable of acting as a metal in antibody radiolabeling; in some respects,
astatine in the +1 state is akin to silver in the same state. Most of the organic
chemistry of astatine is, however, analogous to that of iodine.[42] It has been
suggested that astatine can form a stable monatomic cation in aqueous solution.[40]
[43]

Astatine has an electronegativity of 2.2 on the revised Pauling scale – lower than
that of iodine (2.66) and the same as hydrogen. In hydrogen astatide (HAt), the
negative charge is predicted to be on the hydrogen atom, implying that this
compound could be referred to as astatine hydride according to certain
nomenclatures.[44][45][46][47] That would be consistent with the electronegativity
of astatine on the Allred–Rochow scale (1.9) being less than that of hydrogen
(2.2).[48][c] However, official IUPAC stoichiometric nomenclature is based on an
idealized convention of determining the relative electronegativities of the
elements by the mere virtue of their position within the periodic table. According
to this convention, astatine is handled as though it is more electronegative than
hydrogen, irrespective of its true electronegativity. The electron affinity of
astatine, at 233 kJ mol−1, is 21% less than that of iodine.[50] In comparison, the
value of Cl (349) is 6.4% higher than F (328); Br (325) is 6.9% less than Cl; and I
(295) is 9.2% less than Br. The marked reduction for At was predicted as being due
to spin–orbit interactions.[38] The first ionization energy of astatine is about
899 kJ mol−1, which continues the trend of decreasing first ionization energies
down the halogen group (fluorine, 1681; chlorine, 1251; bromine, 1140; iodine,
1008).[3]