Ytterbium Element

Ytterby, a village in Sweden near Vauxholm) Yttria, which is an earth containing yttrium, was discovered by Gadolin in 1794. Ytterby is the site of a quarry which yielded many unusual minerals containing rare earths and other elements. This small town, near Stockholm, bears the honor of giving names to erbium, terbium, and ytterbium as well as yttrium. 

Ytterby, village in Sweden) Marignac in 1878 discovered a new component, which he called ytterbia, in the earth then known as erbia. In 1907, Urbain separated ytterbia into two components, which he called neoytterbia and lutecia. The elements in these earths are now known as ytterbium and lutetium, respectively. These elements are identical with aldebaranium and cassiopeium, discovered independently and at about the same time by von Welsbach. 

The element was first prepared by Klemm and bonner in 1937 by reducing ytterbium trichloride with potassium. Their metal was mixed, however, with KCl. Daane, Dennison, and Spedding prepared a much purer from in 1953 from which the chemical and physical properties of the element could be determined. 

Ytterbium has a bright silvery luster, is soft, malleable, and quite ductile. While the element is fairly stable, it should be kept in closed containers to protect it from air and moisture. Ytterbium is readily attacked and dissolved by dilute and concentrated mineral acids and reacts slowly with water. Ytterbium has three allotropic forms with transformation points at -13oC and 795oC. The beta form is a room-temperature, face-centered, cubic modification, while the... 

Some nut trees accumulate mineral elements. Hickory nut is notable as an accumulator of aluminum compounds (30) the ash of its leaves contains up to 37.5% of AI2O2, compared with only 0.032% of aluminum oxide in the ash of the Fnglish walnut s autumn leaves. As an accumulator of rare-earth elements, hickory greatly exceeds all other plants their leaves show up to 2296 ppm of rare earths (scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium). The amounts of rare-earth elements found in parts of the hickory nut are kernels, at 5 ppm shells, at 7 ppm and shucks, at 17 ppm. The kernel of the Bra2d nut contains large amounts of barium in an insoluble form when the nut is eaten, barium dissolves in the hydrochloric acid of the stomach. 

According to this assignment the differentiating electron, that is, the final electron to enter the atom of lutetium, wss seen as an f electron. This suggested that lutetium should be the final element in the first row of the rare earth elements, in which f electrons are progressively filled, and not a transition element as had been believed by the chemists. As a result of more recent spectroscopic experiments the configuration of ytterbium has been altered to (27)... 

Name from Ytterby in Sweden four elements were named after the feldspar mine located there yttrium, erbium, terbium, and ytterbium. 

Soft, silvery metal whose isolation is difficult. Ytterbium fluoride is added to dental fillings (as X-ray contrast agent). Ytterbium is a constituent of rust-free special steels. Yb2Co13Fe3Mn holds the magnetic world record, but is too expensive for commercial purposes. The element is occasionally applied in nuclear medicine and radiography. It also activates phosphors that convert infrared rays into visible light. 

The last of the lanthanides, this metal is also the hardest and the densest of them. It is a component of cerium mischmetal. Lutetium has some applications in optoelectronics. Shows great similarities to ytterbium. Its discoverer, Georges Urbain, carried out 15 000 fractional crystallizations to isolate pure lutetium (record ). The element has special catalytic properties (oil industry). 176Lu is generated artificially and is a good beta emitter (research purposes). 177Lu has a half-life of six days and is used in nuclear medicine. 

The reverse reaction, C02 insertion, is well known for Group 1A and 2A organometallics (7). There are also examples for reactive organometallics of other elements (116), e.g., vanadium (117) and ytterbium (118). 

The compounds of the rare earth elements are usually highly colored. Neodymium s compounds are mainly lavender and violet, samarium s yellow and brown, holmium s yellow and orange, and erbium s rose-pink. Europium makes pink salts which evaporate easily. Dysprosium makes greenish yellow compounds, and ytterbium, yellow-gold. Compounds of lutetium are colorless, and compounds of terbium are colorless, dark brown, or black. 

An interesting effect of the half-filled and filled 4/ shell is shown when a graph is made of the melting point of the elements. Such a graph is shown in Figure 11.6. Although it is not shown, a plot of atomic radii for the metals shows a large increase in size for Eu and Yb. For example, the radii of Sm and Gd are approximately 180 pm, but Eu, situated between them, has a radius of 204 pm. The difference in size between Yb and the atoms before and after it also amounts to about 20 pm. Europium and ytterbium... 

These include the following 14 elements cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmi-um, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium. 

Within the lanthanides the first ones from La to Eu are the so-called light lanthanides, the other are the heavy ones. Together with the heavy lanthanides it may be useful to consider also yttrium the atomic dimensions of this element and some general characteristics of its alloying behaviour are indeed very similar to those of typical heavy lanthanides, such as Dy or Ho. An important subdivision within the lanthanides, or more generally within the rare earth metals, is that between the divalent ones (europium and ytterbium which have been described together with other divalent metals in 5.4) and the trivalent ones (all the others, scandium and yttrium included). 

Europium and ytterbium di-valence. The oxidation state II for Eu and Yb has already been considered when discussing the properties of a number of divalent metals (Ca, Sr, Ba in 5.4). This topic was put forward again here in order to give a more complete presentation of the lanthanide properties. The sum of the first three ionization enthalpies is relatively small the lanthanide metals are highly electropositive elements. They generally and easily form in solid oxides, complexes, etc., Ln+3 ions. Different ions may be formed by a few lanthanides such as Ce+4, Sm+2, Eu+2, Yb+2. According to Cotton and Wilkinson (1988) the existence of different oxidation states should be interpreted by considering the ionization... 

The rare earth (RE) ions most commonly used for applications as phosphors, lasers, and amplifiers are the so-called lanthanide ions. Lanthanide ions are formed by ionization of a nnmber of atoms located in periodic table after lanthanum from the cerium atom (atomic number 58), which has an onter electronic configuration 5s 5p 5d 4f 6s, to the ytterbium atom (atomic number 70), with an outer electronic configuration 5s 5p 4f " 6s. These atoms are nsnally incorporated in crystals as divalent or trivalent cations. In trivalent ions 5d, 6s, and some 4f electrons are removed and so (RE) + ions deal with transitions between electronic energy sublevels of the 4f" electroiuc configuration. Divalent lanthanide ions contain one more f electron (for instance, the Eu + ion has the same electronic configuration as the Gd + ion, the next element in the periodic table) but, at variance with trivalent ions, they tand use to show f d interconfigurational optical transitions. This aspect leads to quite different spectroscopic properties between divalent and trivalent ions, and so we will discuss them separately. 

It should be noted that the ytterbium listed above was a mixture discovered in the mineral erbia by de Marignac in 1878 and not the neoytterbium/aldebaranium element renamed ytterbium that was foimd in the mineral ytterbia. The columbium was a mixture found in the mineral samarskite and was not the present day columbium/niobium. The ionium listed above was a mixture of terbium and gadolinium that was found in the mineral yttria and does not refer to °Th. Finally, the neptunium refers to material fovmd in niobium/tantalum minerals and does not refer to the 1940 discovery of the trans-uranium element produced via a neutron capture reaction on a uranium sample. 

Scandium - the atomic number is 21 and the chemical symbol is Sc. The name derives from the Latin scandia for Scandinavia , where the mineral were found. It was discovered by the Swedish chemist Lars-Fredrik Nilson in 1879 from an ytterbium sample. In the same year, the Swedish chemist Per Theodore Cleve proved that scandium was Mendeleev s hypothetical element eka-boron , whose properties and position in the Period Table Mendeleev had previously predicted. 

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