Dysprosium

Element Name: Dysprosium
Atomic Number: 66
Atomic Mass: 162.5
Atomic Symbol: Dy
Melting Point: 1412° C
Boiling Point: 2567° C

Dysprosium’s name comes from the Greek dysprositos, meaning “difficult to get at”. Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered the element in 1886 after repeated crystallizations. It wasn’t until the 1950s that it was isolated in its elemental form. It’s a soft silvery-white lanthanide. It will slowly tarnish in air, and its physical traits can vastly change with even small impurities. It is usually trivalent, but can occasionally be divalent depending on the compound. Dysprosium and holmium have the highest magnetic strength of any pure elements. It has 29 isotopes, seven of which occur naturally in varying abundances. The most abundant is Dysprosium-164.

Interesting Facts:

Dysprosium is ferromagnetic below -188.2°C, then is helical antiferrormagnetic between -188.2°C and -94°C, and is finally paramagnetic above -94°C. It’s sometimes preferable to swap out small amounts of neodymium for dysprosium in powerful magnets because dysprosium is more resilient to external magnetic fields. 99% of the 100 tons produced worldwide is being made in China. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, dysprosium is the most crucial element in the advancement of clean energy technology. It took Boisbaudran 58 precipitations to get the oxalate salt.

Sources:

Dysprosium is never found in its elemental form in nature. Instead it is found in several minerals such as xenotime, fergusonite, monazite, gadolinite, euxenite, polycrase, blomstradine, and bastnasite. Among those, monazite and bastnasite are the most common sources of dysprosium. It occurs in only 6 parts per million, which is moderately low even among other rare earth elements.

Industrial Uses:

Dysprosium has few uses, and is mainly used as in additive in several other rare earth compounds. Dysprosium-oxide-nickel cement is used in control rods of nuclear reactors. Terfenol-D, an alloy of terbium, iron, and dysprosium, is used in sonar, sensors, and a vibrational speaker called the SoundBug. It is used in hard discs and CDs. In the film industry Dysprosium Iodide is used in lamps to create intense white light. Dysprosium and vanadium along with a slew of other rare earth elements are used in lasers.

References:

“Facts About Dysprosium.” Livescience. Livescience.com, 18 July 2013. Web. 26 July
2016.
“Dysprosium.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 26 July 2016.
“Dysprosium Element Facts / Chemistry.” Chemicool. Chemicool.com, 5 Oct. 2012.
Web. 26 July 2016.
Gray, Theodore W., and Nick Mann. The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every
Known Atom in the Universe. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2009. Print.