Isotopes of neodymium

Naturally occurring neodymium (₆₀Nd) is composed of 5 stable isotopes, ¹⁴²Nd, ¹⁴³Nd, ¹⁴⁵Nd, ¹⁴⁶Nd and ¹⁴⁸Nd, with ¹⁴²Nd being the most abundant (27.2% natural abundance), and 2 long-lived radioisotopes, ¹⁴⁴Nd and ¹⁵⁰Nd. In all, 33 radioisotopes of neodymium have been characterized up to now, with the most stable being naturally occurring isotopes ¹⁴⁴Nd (alpha decay, a half-life (t_1/2) of 2.29×10¹⁵ years) and ¹⁵⁰Nd (double beta decay, t_1/2 of 7×10¹⁸ years), and for practical purposes they can be considered to be stable as well. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 12 days, and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 70 seconds; the most stable artificial isotope is ¹⁴⁷Nd with a half-life of 10.98 days. This element also has 13 known meta states with the most stable being ^139mNd (t_1/2 5.5 hours), ^135mNd (t_1/2 5.5 minutes) and ^133m1Nd (t_1/2 ~70 seconds).

The primary decay modes before the most abundant stable isotope (also the only theoretically stable isotope), ¹⁴²Nd, are electron capture and positron decay, and the primary mode after is beta decay. The primary decay products before ¹⁴²Nd are praseodymium isotopes and the primary products after are promethium isotopes.