All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 52, a metalloid
One of the rarest stable elements in the crust, named for the Earth, and a key ingredient in thin-film solar panels.
Period 5, group 16. The other metalloids are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
A metalloid: it tends to share electrons in covalent bonds rather than give them up completely.
About as rare in the crust as gold and platinum. It turns up in gold ores as tellurides such as calaverite (AuTe₂), and it is recovered from the sludge left when copper is refined.
Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein found it in 1782 in a gold ore from Transylvania. Martin Heinrich Klaproth confirmed it in 1798 and named it from the Latin tellus, earth.
Cadmium telluride thin-film solar panels now take a large share. Bismuth telluride makes thermoelectric coolers and generators, tellurium alloys store data in rewritable optical discs, and small additions make steel and copper easier to machine and help cure rubber.
Even small exposures give the breath and sweat a strong garlic smell for weeks, from a compound the body makes out of it. Larger amounts are toxic.