Isotopes of mercury

There are seven stable isotopes of mercury (₈₀Hg) with ²⁰²Hg being the most abundant (29.86%). The longest-lived radioisotopes are ¹⁹⁴Hg with a half-life of 444 years, and ²⁰³Hg with a half-life of 46.612 days. Most of the remaining 40 radioisotopes have half-lives that are less than a day. ¹⁹⁹Hg and ²⁰¹Hg are the most often studied NMR-active nuclei, having spin quantum numbers of 1/2 and 3/2 respectively. All isotopes of mercury are either radioactive or observationally stable, meaning that they are predicted to be radioactive but no actual decay has been observed. These isotopes are predicted to undergo either alpha decay or double beta decay.

¹⁸⁰Hg, producible from ¹⁸⁰Tl, was found in 2010 to be capable of an unusual form of spontaneous fission.^[4] The fission products are ⁸⁰Kr and ¹⁰⁰Ru.