What is ytterbium used for

Ytterbium has few uses. It can be alloyed with stainless steel to improve some of its mechanical properties and used as a doping agent in fiber optic cable. One of ytterbium's isotopes is being considered as a radiation source for portable X-ray machines. Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory. Chemists eventually changed the name neoytterbium back to ytterbium and changed the spelling of lutecium to lutetium.

Due to his original belief of the composition of ytterbia, Marignac is credited with the discovery of ytterbium. Today, ytterbium is primarily obtained through an ion exchange process from monazite sand Ce, La, Th, Nd, Y PO 4 , a material rich in rare earth elements.

Ytterbium has few uses. It can be alloyed with stainless steel to improve some of its mechanical properties and used as a doping agent in fiber optic cable where it can be used as an amplifier. One of ytterbium's isotopes is being considered as a radiation source for portable X-ray machines. Ytterbium poses no threat to plants and animals and its salts are being introduced into the chemical industry as catalysts in place of ones that are regarded as toxic and polluting.

Back to periodic table of elements. More from 'Elements'. Toggle navigation. Home Periodic table Elements Ytterbium. About Lenntech. General Delivery Conditions. Glossary Image explanation Murray Robertson is the artist behind the images which make up Visual Elements.

Appearance The description of the element in its natural form. Biological role The role of the element in humans, animals and plants. Natural abundance Where the element is most commonly found in nature, and how it is sourced commercially. Uses and properties. Image explanation. The image is based on ancient Swedish rock carvings. A soft, silvery metal. It slowly oxidises in air, forming a protective surface layer.

Ytterbium is beginning to find a variety of uses, such as in memory devices and tuneable lasers. It can also be used as an industrial catalyst and is increasingly being used to replace other catalysts considered to be too toxic and polluting. Biological role. Ytterbium has no known biological role. It has low toxicity.

Natural abundance. In common with many lanthanide elements, ytterbium is found principally in the mineral monazite. It can be extracted by ion exchange and solvent extraction. Help text not available for this section currently. Elements and Periodic Table History. The story began with yttrium, discovered in , which was contaminated with other rare-earth elements aka lanthanoids.

In , erbium and terbium were extracted from it, and then in , de Marignac separated ytterbium from erbium. He heated erbium nitrate until it decomposed and then extracted the residue with water and obtained two oxides: a red one which was erbium oxide, and a white one which he knew must be a new element, and this he named ytterbium.

Even this was eventually shown to contain another rare earth, lutetium, in A tiny amount of ytterbium metal was made in by heating ytterbium chloride and potassium together but was impure.

Only in was a pure sample obtained. Atomic data. Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom.

Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey. Relative supply risk An integrated supply risk index from 1 very low risk to 10 very high risk.

Recycling rate The percentage of a commodity which is recycled. Substitutability The availability of suitable substitutes for a given commodity. Reserve distribution The percentage of the world reserves located in the country with the largest reserves.

Political stability of top producer A percentile rank for the political stability of the top producing country, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Political stability of top reserve holder A percentile rank for the political stability of the country with the largest reserves, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Supply risk. Relative supply risk 9. Russia 3 USA Political stability of top producer Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance.

Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance. Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate.

Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Ytterbium Podcast Transcript :. You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. This week an element that likes to be different. Explaining the exceptional chemistry of Ytterbium, here's Louise Natrajan.

With few exceptions, this tells the whole boring story about the other 14 elements". If you've listened to any of the other podcasts in the lanthanide series, I hope you'll agree that this is far from true. Ytterbium is named after the town of Ytterby near Stockholm in Sweden, and makes up the fourth element to be named after this town, the others being of course yttrium, terbium and erbium.

Ytterbium was isolated in by Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac who was a Swiss chemist working at the University of Geneva at the time. Its discovery can be traced back to the oxide yttria. When yttria was first identified, nobody realised that it was contaminated with traces of other rare earth metals. Earlier, in , erbium and terbium were extracted from yttria and then ytterbium was separated from erbium. This was achieved by heating erbium nitrate until it decomposed and then extracting the residue with water to obtain two oxides; a red one, which was identified as erbium oxide and a white powder, which was named ytterbium oxide.

In fact, Marignac's ytterbium oxide was not of a pure form either and a few years later in , George Urbain extracted lutetium as its oxide from this ytterbium oxide. Ytterbium is one of the more common lanthanide elements, and is not at all rare as its group name of the rare earths may suggest. In fact, it is the 43rd most abundant element on earth and has a greater natural abundance than tin, bromine, uranium or arsenic. In its metallic form, ytterbium is a bright and shiny metal that is both ductile and malleable and is more reactive than the other lanthanide metals, quickly tarnishing in air as it reacts with oxygen.