Lutetium ionization

As with the Sm- Nd and Re- Os systems, careful chemistry is required to cleanly separate the parent and daughter elements because mass spectrometry cannot resolve 176Lu from 176Hf. The ion-exchange chemistry is similar to that for samarium-neodymium. In fact, fractions of samarium, neodymium, lutetium and hafnium are often produced in a single procedure. Mass spectrometry is done by ICPMS because this is the only method that effectively ionizes hafnium. 

The nine d-block elements of period 6 viz. Hf to Hg have [Xe]4/l4 core like lutetium and not just the [Xe] core of the lanthanum. Similarly, in passing down the columns of the d-block from Ti to Zn, the addition of 4/ subshell is encountered in moving from period 5 to 6. The periodic trends in atomic radii, sum of the first two ionization potentials, melting... 

The only class of lanthanidomesogens for which electrical properties have been investigated in detail, are the bis(phthalocyaninato)lanthanide(III) sandwich complexes. As already described in Section 8, the free electron in these complexes is associated with the extensive re-system of the phthalocyanine macrocycles. The individual Pc2Lu units can be considered nominally as Lu " Pc2 The bis(phthalocyaninato)lutetium(III) complexes are intrinsic molecular semiconductors. The generation of charge carriers can be represented by the reaction AAA A free carriers, where A is the molecular unit. The ionized pair A " A is photochemically or thermally activated. 

Explain the discontinuity in the plot of the third ionization energies of the lanthanides at lutetium in Figure 6.6. 

---