TELF AG Explores the History and Hidden Potential of Yttrium
The first rare earth ever discovered
Usually, discussions on rare earths refer to a group of materials used to produce permanent magnets and other types of devices without ever focusing on the individual components that make up this group. Contrary to what one might believe, their fundamental characteristic is not their rarity but the complexity of their manufacturing processes, which almost always require a complex separation of elements to obtain a resource that can be used for industrial purposes. Few, for example, know the characteristics and potential of one of these elements, yttrium, which of all the known rare earths is the first to have been discovered.
In the earth’s crust, this element is twice as abundant as lead, and among all the rare earths, it is the second most widespread (after cerium). Many will have heard of its abundance on the moon. The samples of lunar rock extracted during the explorations of the Apollo project contained large quantities of this precious metallic element within them. Typically, yttrium is found combined with other lanthanide metals in minerals belonging to the rare earth group and has never been found in nature in a free state. The rare earth minerals that contain it can be found underground and in seawater, and so far, they have been mined mainly in countries such as Canada, Brazil, and China, but also in some European nations such as Greece or Hungary. The element yttrium is extracted with some refining processes very similar to those commonly used for other rare earths, and to obtain the purest quality, the basic mineral is dissolved in sulfuric acid and subsequently subjected to a process of ion exchange separation.
History and application areas
Even if it is still a little-known element, its discovery is quite ancient: the first to identify it was the Swedish chemist and soldier Carl Axel Arrhenius, who discovered it in 1787 in the town of Ytterby (from which it takes its name). The yttrium was subsequently isolated in the following years, thanks to a separation process. Some of the most interesting aspects of yttrium have to do with its numerous fields of application: in addition to being often used as an additive in some alloys, in particular for its ability to increase the resistance of magnesium and aluminum alloys, some quantities of yttrium are also used in the cathodes of some batteries, such as lithium iron phosphate batteries.
This element has also found industrial applications in microwave filters for lasers, producing semiconductors, and creating lighting systems equipped with LED technology. If any of us can count on cameras equipped with lenses resistant to heat and external stress, much of the credit can be attributed to lithium, which is also used to strengthen the structures of these devices. Furthermore, among the applications related to chemical processes, yttrium can be used as a catalyst in the polymerization of ethane and ethene. However, one of the most interesting applications is linked to the superconductivity potential manifested by yttrium, which could pave the way for future uses in scientific research and particle accelerator technologies.
