What Is Dysprosium

Name Origin
Greek: dysprositos (hard to get at).
"Dysprosium" in different languages.

Sources
Dysprosium is never encountered as the free element. Usually found with erbium, holmium and other rare earths in some minerals (euxenite ((Y,Ca,Ce,U,Th)(Nb,Ta,Ti)2O6), fergusonite ((Ce,La,Nd)NbO4), gadolinite ((Ce,La,Nd,Y)2FeBe2Si2O10) and xenotime to name a few).
Around 100 tons are produced annually. Primary mining occurs in the USA, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka and Australia.




Abundance
Universe: 0.002 ppm (by weight)
Sun: 0.002 ppm (by weight)
Carbonaceous meteorite: 0.28 ppm
Earth's Crust: 6 ppm
Seawater: Atlantic surface: 8 x 10-7 ppm Atlantic deep: 9.6 x 10-7 ppm Pacific surface: n/a ppm Pacific deep: n/a ppm

Uses
Dysprosium is used for manufacturing compact discs, and in conjunction with vanadium and other elements is used in making laser materials.
As control-rods for nuclear reactors because it readily absorbs neutrons.




History
Dysprosium was first identified in Paris in 1886 by French chemist Paul Emile 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 "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 lanthanoids.

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