| Discovery date | 1880 |
| Discovered by | Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac |
| Origin of the name | Gadolinium was named in honour of Johan Gadolin. |
| Allotropes |
|
Gd
Gadolinium
64
157.25
| Group | Lanthanides | Melting point | 1313°C, 2395°F, 1586 K |
| Period | 6 | Boiling point | 3273°C, 5923°F, 3546 K |
| Block | f | Density (g cm−3) | 7.90 |
| Atomic number | 64 | Relative atomic mass | 157.25 |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 158Gd |
| Electron configuration | [Xe] 4f75d16s2 | CAS number | 7440-54-2 |
| ChemSpider ID | 22418 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
Image explanation
The image reflects the past use of the element in television screens.
Appearance
A soft, silvery metal that reacts with oxygen and water.
Uses
Gadolinium has useful properties in alloys. As little as 1% gadolinium can improve the workability of iron and chromium alloys, and their resistance to high temperatures and oxidation. It is also used in alloys for making magnets, electronic components and data storage disks.
Its compounds are useful in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), particularly in diagnosing cancerous tumours.
Gadolinium is excellent at absorbing neutrons, and so is used in the core of nuclear reactors.
Biological role
Gadolinium has no known biological role, and has low toxicity.
Natural abundance
In common with other lanthanides, gadolinium is mainly found in the minerals monazite and bastnaesite. It can be commercially prepared from these minerals by ion exchange and solvent extraction. It is also prepared by reducing anhydrous gadolinium fluoride with calcium metal.
Gadolinium was discovered in 1880 by Charles Galissard de Marignac at Geneva. He had long suspected that the didymium reported by Carl Mosander was not a new element but a mixture. His suspicions were confirmed when Marc Delafontaine and Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran at Paris reported that its spectral lines varied according to the source from which it came. Indeed, in 1879 they had already separated samarium from some didymium which had been extracted from the mineral samarskite, found in the Urals. In 1880, Marignac extracted yet another new rare earth from didymium, as did Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1886, and it was the latter who called it gadolinium.
| Atomic radius, non-bonded (Å) | 2.34 | Covalent radius (Å) | 1.82 |
| Electron affinity (kJ mol−1) | Unknown |
Electronegativity (Pauling scale) |
1.20 |
|
Ionisation energies (kJ mol−1) |
1st
593.366
2nd
1166.51
3rd
1990.49
4th
4245
5th
-
6th
-
7th
-
8th
-
|
||
| Common oxidation states | 3 | ||||
| Isotopes | Isotope | Atomic mass | Natural abundance (%) | Half life | Mode of decay |
| 152Gd | 151.920 | 0.2 | - | - | |
| 154Gd | 153.921 | 2.18 | - | - | |
| 155Gd | 154.923 | 14.8 | - | - | |
| 156Gd | 155.922 | 20.47 | - | - | |
| 157Gd | 156.924 | 15.65 | - | - | |
| 158Gd | 157.924 | 24.84 | - | - | |
| 160Gd | 159.927 | 21.86 | > 1.9 x 1019 y | β-β- | |
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Specific heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1) |
235 | Young's modulus (GPa) | 54.8 | |||||||||||
| Shear modulus (GPa) | 21.8 | Bulk modulus (GPa) | 37.9 | |||||||||||
| Vapour pressure | ||||||||||||||
| Temperature (K) |
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| Pressure (Pa) |
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| Listen to Gadolinium Podcast |
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Transcript :
Chemistry in its element: gadolinium(Promo) You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World, the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. (End promo) Meera Senthilingham This week: the art of naming an element. Here's Simon Cotton: Simon Cotton It's always interesting to know where an element takes its name. The family of elements that we call the lanthanides, or lanthanoids, have a somewhat random selection of names. That's because identifying the 15 lanthanide elements took over one hundred and fifty years, from the isolation of the first compounds to the synthesis of the last lanthanide, radioactive promethium, in 1947. Some are named after gods, such as cerium; some like europium are named after places; and others including gadolinium, the star of this podcast, derive their names from scientists. Gadolinium is named after Johan Gadolin, a Finnish scientist who was both a chemist and geologist. In 1792 he isolated the first rare earth compound, what we now know as yttrium oxide, from a black mineral that had been discovered at Ytterby in Sweden. A few years later this ore, which contained a number of lanthanides, was named gadolinite. Because of the difficulty in separating the very similar lanthanides, it was not until 1880 that a Swiss chemist named de Marignac identified spectroscopic lines due to the element we now know as gadolinium. Six years later, in 1886, the French chemist de Boisbaudran isolated the pure oxide, and called the element gadolinium, as it was obtained from gadolinite. Metallic gadolinium was not isolated until 1935, and like all the other lanthanides, it is a reactive metal. Nearly all the known chemistry of gadolinium is that of the gadolinium three plus (3+) ion. This ion is colourless and does not at first glance seem very interesting. But like most other lanthanides and indeed transition metals, it has several unpaired electrons, giving it interesting magnetic properties. In fact this ion has 7 unpaired electrons in its 4f orbitals giving it a very large magnetic moment, and scientists are currently interested in making use of this. As everyone knows, chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs for short, have been widely used in the past in fridges and freezers as the refrigerant gas. CFCs contribute to both depleting the Ozone layer and they are also Greenhouse gases, and due to this their use in the developed world has largely ceased. Meaning a good, more environmentally friendly, replacement is needed. Gadolinium may prove useful the fridges of the future due to a process known as magnetic refrigeration or adiabatic demagnetisation. It works like this: - A magnetic fridge has actually been constructed making use of gadolinium's ability to do this. The fridge contains a wheel with segments of powdered gadolinium, and as the wheel turns it passes through a gap between the poles of a very powerful magnet. When gadolinium is in the magnetic field it heats up, so it has to be cooled down by passing water through it. Then as the wheel turns and the gadolinium leaves the magnetic field, the gadolinium starts to cools even more. A second lot of water is then flowed over the metal, which in turn is cooled down. This cool water is then circulated through the cooling coils of the fridge. It's makers based at Iowa State University, say that this 'magnetic' refrigeration is 20 to 30 percent more energy efficient than conventional refrigeration - adding to its 'green' credentials. That use may lie in the future, but the use of gadolinium in Magnetic Resonance Imaging is very much in the present. MRI is a routine non-invasive clinical method used to produce two-dimensional images of our tissues or organs for diagnostic purposes. When searching for blood vessels or tumours, contrast agents are injected intravenously to improve the image quality of the MRI signal, and these are normally aqueous solutions of gadolinium complexes. The free Gd3+ ion has a similar ionic radius to Ca2+ but a greater charge, so gadolinium itself can not be used as it might interfere with various calcium roles in signalling within the body and therefore be toxic. So the gadolinium ions are turned into stable complexes before being used, by reacting them with ligands like diethylenetriamine pentacetic acid, known as DPTA. This ligand has 8 atoms to attach to gadolinium, meaning it is bound very tightly indeed, ensuring free, toxic, gadolinium is not released. Once injected the compound circulates though the vascular system and then is filtered out through the kidneys and excreted unchanged. All the evidence suggests that it is quite safe, but at present its use in pregnant women is discouraged, largely because its safety for the foetus has not been proved. So Gadolinium - colourless and initially may not sound very interesting, but may hold the key to keeping your milk or butter cool without damaging our environment and may even help save your life. Meera Senthilingham So offering the potential to save our lives and the environment - quite an element. That was Uppingham School's Simon Cotton with the heroic chemistry of gadolinium. Now, next week, we go back to the importance of naming an element, but also its pronunciation. Brian Clegg You'd think it is pretty strightforward to decide what an element is called, but element 102 has had more than its fair share of misunderstandings and arguments. To begin with, there's the matter of how to pronounce its current name: no-bell-ium, as it comes from the same root as the Nobel prize; or no-beel-ium, modelled on the way we say 'helium'. Even the Royal Society of Chemistry's representatives had a raging discussion on this when I asked them, before plumping for no-beel-ium. And that's just the pronunciation, the name itself took a fair amount of sorting out. Meera Senthilingham And join Brian Clegg to find out how element 102 received its name, as well as the wonders of its chemistry, in next week's Chemistry in its element. Until then, thank you for listening, I'm Meera Senthilingham. (Promo) Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.com. There's more information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld.org/elements. (End promo)
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Visual Elements images and videos
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
Data
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
Uses and properties
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Supply risk data
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
History text
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Podcasts
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Periodic Table of Videos
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
