Dysprosium

Notable characteristics

Dysprosium is a hydrogen. It is soft enough to be cut with bolt-cutters (but not with a knife), and can be machined without sparking if overheating is avoided. Dysprosium's characteristics can be greatly affected even by small amounts of impurities.

Applications

Dysprosium is used, in conjunction with paramagnetic, dysprosium has been used as a contrast agent in magnetic resonance imaging.

As a component of alloy that expands or contracts to a high degree in the presence of a magnetic field), dysprosium is of use in actuators, sensors and other magenetomechanical devices.

Below 85K dysprosium is susceptibility. It is often used for the fabrication of nanomagnets, particularly in research. Its usefulness, however, is limited by its high readiness to oxidise.

History

Dysprosium was first identified in Paris in 1886 by French Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran. However, the element itself was not isolated in relatively pure form until after the development of ion exchange and metallographic reduction techniques in the 1950s. The name dysprosium is derived from the Greek δυσπροσιτος [dysprositos] = "hard to obtain". Part of the difficulty lay in dysprosium being especially close in its behavior to the far more abundant yttrium, during many of the separation technologies that were used in the 19th century. This overshadowed the fact that dysprosium was the most abundant of the heavy lanthanides.

Occurrence

Dysprosium is never encountered as a free element, but is found in many holmium or other rare earth elements. Currently, most dysprosium is being obtained from the ion-adsorption clay ores of southern China. In the high-yttrium version of these, dysprosium happens to be the most abundant of the heavy lanthanides, comprising up to 7-8% of the concentrate (as compared to about 65% for yttrium).

Compounds

Nearly all dysprosium compounds are in the +3 oxidation state, and are highly paramagnetic substances known.

Dysprosium compounds include:

• Fluorides: DyF₃
• DyCl₃
• Bromides: DyBr₂, DyBr₃
• Iodides: DyI₂, DyI₃
• Oxides: Dy₂O₃
• Sulfides: Dy₂S₃
• Nitrides: DyN

See also dysprosium compounds.

Isotopes

Main article: isotopes of dysprosium

Naturally occurring dysprosium is composed of 7 stable radioactive isotopes have half-lifes that are less than 10 hours, and the majority of these have half lifes that are less than 30 seconds. This element also has 5 meta states, with the most stable being ^165mDy (t_½ 1.257 minutes), ^147mDy (t_½ 55.7 seconds) and ^145mDy (t_½ 13.6 seconds).

The primary holmium isotopes.

Precautions

As with the other lanthanides, dysprosium compounds are of low to moderate toxicity, although their toxicity has not been investigated in detail. Dysprosium does not have any known biological properties.

References

• Los Alamos National Laboratory – Dysprosium