Is francium (Fr) likely to be reduced in a chemical reaction?

Question

Is francium (Fr) likely to be reduced in a chemical reaction?

Answer 1

it could be reduced only if it is cationic form.

Answer 2

Oh, goodness, no.

First reason.  As others have pointed out, it's an alkali metal.  In fact, it's the alkaly-est of alkalis, because it's at the bottom, so Francium beats out the rest for all the properties that characterize Group 1 elements.  Low ionization energy?  The lowest, less than 370 kJ/mol.  Low electronegativity?  Lowest anywhere on the whole periodic table, only 0.7.  Least favourable electron affinity of all the Group 1s, too.  So even if you reacted Fr with another alkali metal, you're thermodynamically favoured to reduce the other thing rather than Fr.  That is, Fr+Na– is a better outcome than Na+Fr–.

(Actually, given the known formation of diatomics like NaCs, you'd probably just get that with Fr -- a diatomic molecule with a polar bond, but Fr would always be the (+) end.)

Second reason, far more important.  Fr is unlikely to be reduced in a chemical reaction because for that to happen you'd have to get enough to do a reaction with, which is tricky, because there are no stable isotopes of Fr.   It occurs naturally on the decay chain from uranium-235 to lead, but estimates put only about 30g of it in the entirety of the earth's crust, because the longest lived isotope has a half-life of only 23 minutes.  In fact, the most francium there has ever been in one place amounted to about an attogram (10^–18).  So it's not "likely" to do *any*chemical reaction, because there's not enough of it and it decays too quickly to do chemistry with.

Answer 3

Reduction is gain in electron.  Francium has one valence electron, very weakly attracted to the nucleus.  It is much more likely to get rid of the one valence electron to achieve stability, than to seek out more electrons.

Answer 4

No given it's position on the periodic able it ought to be realized that it is a strong reducing agent and therefore not likely to be itself reduced.