Rare earths History

Krebs, Robert E. The history and use of our earth s chemical elements a reference guide. Westport (CT) Greenwood P, 1998. ix, 346p. ISBN 0-313-30123-9 A short history of chemistry — Atomic structure The periodic table of the chemical elements — Alkali metals and alkali earth metals - Transition elements metals to nonmetals — Metallics and metalloids - Metalloids and nonmetals — Halogens and noble gases - Lanthanide series (rare-earth elements) — Actinide, transuranic, and transactinide series... 

Trace metals, such as copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc, and various rare earth elements, tend to coprecipitate with or adsorb onto Fe-Mn oxides. As shown in Table 18.1, this causes these elements to be highly enriched in the hydrogenous deposits as compared to their concentrations in seawater. The degree of enrichment is dependent on various environmental factors, such as the redox history of the underlying sediments and hydrothermal activity. This makes the composition of the oxides geographically variable. 

The discovery of the rare earth elements provide a long history of almost two hundred years of trial and error in the claims of element discovery starting before the time of Dalton s theory of the atom and determination of atomic weight values, Mendeleev s periodic table, the advent of optical spectroscopy, Bohr s theory of the electronic structure of atoms and Moseley s x-ray detection method for atomic number determination. The fact that the similarity in the chemical properties of the rare earth elements make them especially difficult to chemically isolate led to a situation where many mixtures of elements were being mistaken for elemental species. As a result, atomic weight values were not nearly as useful because the lack of separation meant that additional elements would still be present within an oxide and lead to inaccurate atomic weight values. Very pure rare earth samples did not become a reality until the mid twentieth century. 

An interesting bit of history is that the American chemist Charles James, of the University of New Hampshire, and his students also discovered lutetium in 1907. They processed many tons of ore, and by using the crystallization process, produced a small sample of lutetium. James s work was recognized in 1999 by the ACS (American Chemical Society). This is the only example of a rare-earth being discovered in the United States. 

Recently, Carpentier summarized this topic in a review including copolymerization behavior of a variety of catalytic compounds [87]. The history of rare-earth... 

History of Rare Earth Applications, Rare Earth Market Today... 

The history of the rare earth elements begins in 1788 in Sweden. I would like to divide the time between that year and the present day into 4 periods of application of the rare esarths. First Period ... 

In Figures 1 and 2, the history seems clear cut and orderly, but one should keep in mind that for a long time there was an understandable confusion of names due to the poor communication among workers in the 19th and early 20th century. What was thought to be a new element was in most of the cases, a mixture of the closely related rare earths. It took years to clarify the confusion,... 

Catalyst Changeover. Metals Content. The equilibrium sample of a USY octane catalyst, Catalyst A, was withdrawn from an Amoco FCU. Results of metals analyses on the equilibrium catalyst and on its parent are given in Table I. Catalyst A was introduced to the unit during a five-month period over Catalyst B, which was identical to Catalyst A in all respects, except for a low level of contaminant rare earth. Catalyst B had, in turn, been introduced over a rare earth-containing catalyst, Catalyst C, eight months prior to withdrawal of the equilibrium sample. Catalyst history and rare earth contents are summarized in Table II. 

F. Szabadvary, The history of the discovery and separation of the rare earths 33... 

C. H. Evans, ed., Episodes from the History of the Rare Earth Elements, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1996. 

The rare earth elements are different from other elements because the optical transitions between levels of the fn configuration are inherently very sharp-lined and have well-resolved structure characteristic of the local crystal fields around the ion. In minerals, this characteristic provides an excellent probe of the local structure at the atomic level. Examples will be shown from our work of how site selective laser spectroscopy can be used to determine the thermal history of a sample, the point defect equilibria that are important, the presence of coupled ion substitution, the determination of multiple phases, and stoichiometry of the phase. The paper will also emphasize the fact that the usefulness and the interpretation of the rare earth luminescence is complicated by the presence of quenching and disorder in mineral samples. One in fact needs to know a great deal about a sample before the wealth of information contained in the site selective luminescence spectrum can be understood. 

On hafnium see H. Kragh, Anatomy of a priority conflict The case of element 72, Centaurus, 23 (1980) 275-301 and, on rare earths, C.H. Evans (ed.), Episodes from the History of Rare Earth Elements (Dordrecht Kluwer, 1996). 

Figure 8.1 Periodic system, 1920s and 1930s. Prior to the 1940s, the lanthanides (rare-earths) were grouped separately as shown, but Th, Pa, and U (now classified as actinides), were considered to be transition elements, as shown in this table according to A. von Antropoff. From J. W. van Spronsen, The Periodic System of the Chemical Elements A History of the First Hundred Years (Amsterdam, 1969), fig. 59, p. 160.

Evidence of protracted growth history of skam garnet using SIMS oxygen isotope, trace element, and rare earth element data. Geol. Soc. Amer. Abstr. Prog. 1995. 

While the history of the discovery and the separation of the rare earths is well documented, the story of the accommodation of the rare earths in the periodic table is less well known. Part of the story can be found in the famous book on the periodic system of van Spronsen (1969), but recent investigations in the field of the history and philosophy of chemistry have shed new light on the early episodes of the development of the periodic system after 1869. Moreover, the accommodation of the rare earths in the periodic table is still an active research topic. In 2008 and 2009, there was a debate in the Journal of Chemical Education on the position of the lanthanides and actinides in the periodic table (Clark and White, 2008 Lavelle, 2008a,b, 2009 Stewart, 2008 Jensen, 2008b, 2009 Clark, 2008 Scerri, 2009a Laing, 2009). 

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE RARE-EARTH ELEMENTS... 

The Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac (1817-1894), was the first in applying these spectroscopic methods. He was 23 years old when he embarked upon his quest for new rare-earth elements. He demonstrated in 1878 that "erbia was a complex mixture of at least two rare-earth elements, erbium and "ytterbium (Yb), by heating "erbium nitrate and extracting the decomposed salt with water. The little Swedish village Ytterby thus holds a distinguished place in the history of the rare-earth elements. 

Kragh, H., 1996. Elements No. 70, 71 and 72 discoveries and controversies. In Evans, C.H. (Ed.), Episodes from the History of the Rare Earth Elements. Kluwer Academic Publishers, London, pp. 67-90. 

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