| Discovery date | 1886 |
| Discovered by | Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran |
| Origin of the name | The name is derived from the Greek 'dysprositos', meaning hard to get. |
| Allotropes |
|
Dy
Dysprosium
66
162.500
| Group | Lanthanides | Melting point | 1412°C, 2574°F, 1685 K |
| Period | 6 | Boiling point | 2567°C, 4653°F, 2840 K |
| Block | f | Density (g cm−3) | 8.55 |
| Atomic number | 66 | Relative atomic mass | 162.500 |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 164Dy |
| Electron configuration | [Xe] 4f106s2 | CAS number | 7429-91-6 |
| ChemSpider ID | 22355 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
Image explanation
The image is a stylised depiction of a nuclear reactor, reflecting the use of the element in reactor control rods.
Appearance
A bright, silvery metallic element.
Uses
As a pure metal it is little used, because it reacts readily with water and air. Dysprosium’s main use is in alloys for neodymium-based magnets. This is because it is resistant to demagnetisation at high temperatures. This property is important for magnets used in motors or generators. These magnets are used in wind turbines and electrical vehicles, so demand for dysprosium is growing rapidly.
Dysprosium iodide is used in halide discharge lamps. The salt enables the lamps to give out a very intense white light.
A dysprosium oxide-nickel cermet (a composite material of ceramic and metal) is used in nuclear reactor control rods. It readily absorbs neutrons, and does not swell or contract when bombarded with neutrons for long periods.
Biological role
Dysprosium has no known biological role. It has low toxicity.
Natural abundance
In common with many other lanthanides, dysprosium is found in the minerals monazite and bastnaesite. It is also found in smaller quantities in several other minerals such as xenotime and fergusonite.
It can be extracted from these minerals by ion exchange and solvent extraction. It can also be prepared by the reduction of dysprosium trifluoride with calcium metal.
Dysprosium was discovered in 1886 by Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in Paris. Its discovery came as a result of research into yttrium oxide, first made in 1794, and from which other rare earths (aka lanthanoids) were subsequently to be extracted, namely erbium in 1843, then holmium in 1878, and finally dysprosium. De Boisbaudran’s method had involved endless precipitations carried out on the marble slab of his fireplace at home.
Pure samples of dysprosium were not available until Frank Spedding and co-workers at Iowa State University developed the technique of ion-exchange chromatography around 1950. From then on it was possible to separate the rare earth elements in a reliable and efficient manner, although that method of separation has now been superseded by liquid-liquid exchange technology.
| Atomic radius, non-bonded (Å) | 2.31 | Covalent radius (Å) | 1.80 |
| Electron affinity (kJ mol−1) | Unknown |
Electronegativity (Pauling scale) |
1.22 |
|
Ionisation energies (kJ mol−1) |
1st
573.017
2nd
1125.98
3rd
2199.9
4th
4001.25
5th
-
6th
-
7th
-
8th
-
|
||
| Common oxidation states | 3 | ||||
| Isotopes | Isotope | Atomic mass | Natural abundance (%) | Half life | Mode of decay |
| 156Dy | 155.924 | 0.056 | - | - | |
| 158Dy | 157.924 | 0.095 | - | - | |
| 160Dy | 159.925 | 2.329 | - | - | |
| 161Dy | 160.927 | 18.889 | - | - | |
| 162Dy | 161.927 | 25.475 | - | - | |
| 163Dy | 162.929 | 24.896 | - | - | |
| 164Dy | 163.929 | 28.26 | - | - | |
|
|
|
Specific heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1) |
173 | Young's modulus (GPa) | 61.4 | |||||||||||
| Shear modulus (GPa) | 24.7 | Bulk modulus (GPa) | 40.5 | |||||||||||
| Vapour pressure | ||||||||||||||
| Temperature (K) |
|
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| Pressure (Pa) |
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| Listen to Dysprosium Podcast |
|
Transcript :
Chemistry in its element: dysprosium(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 Senthilingam This week an element which played hard to get but once caught gave a wide range of chemical applications. Simon Cotton. Simon Cotton If you study a timeline of the discovery of the chemical elements, you see that new elements have often been discovered in clusters, in parallel with some other breakthrough in science. Obviously, the transuranium elements were a spin-off from developments in radiochemistry accompanying the Manhattan project - the second world war project to develop the first atomic bomb. Likewise the noble gases could easily be separated once cryogenics became feasible, thanks to the invention of Dewar's flask. In the mid-19th century, Bunsen and Kirchhoff found that different elements emitted light of different frequencies when hot, and used this to identify new elements such as rubidium and caesium. Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran was one of the first people to exploit this new technique. He came from Cognac in France, so you will not be surprised to learn that his family made cognac. In 1875, he identified gallium from two spectroscopic lines in the spectrum of a sample of zinc blende from the Pyrénées, and isolated the element later that year, thus filling one of the gaps left in the Periodic Table by Mendeleev. At that time, scientists were using improved techniques such as fractional crystallisation to obtain the individual lanthanides from mixtures. In 1879 Lecoq went on to extract pure samarium from the mineral samarskite whilst in 1886 he was the first person to identify dysprosium by separating its oxide from holmium oxide. To achieve the separation, he used precipitations with ammonia and with oxalate, checking the fractions spectroscopically. It took him over 30 goes to do this, so he named the element accordingly, from the Greek word, dysprositos, meaning "hard to get at". All the lanthanides are rather similar to each other chemically, showing gradations in properties from one end of the series to the other, but electronic and magnetic properties which depend upon the number of electrons, vary a lot from one lanthanide to its neighbour, giving each lanthanide its own particular uses. One very unusual application for dysprosium is in the alloy Terfenol-D, which also contains terbium and iron. It is a magnetostrictive material, meaning that when it is put into a magnetic field, it changes shape, reversibly. This has found applications in ships' sonar systems (underwater radar using soundwaves) and in all sorts of sensors and transducers. Along with a little caesium iodide and mercury bromide, dysprosium iodide is used in Medium Source Rare Earth Lamps (otherwise known as MSRs). These are discharge lamps where the dysprosium iodide emits over a range of frequencies, giving a good colour rendering. Caesium iodide helps broaden the emission whilst the mercury bromide reduces corrosion of the bulb and of the tungsten electrodes. These have applications including the film industry; the lamps have a high luminous efficiency whilst they can be dimmed appreciably whilst still maintaining the same "colour temperature". Like other heavier lanthanides, dysprosium has a lot of unpaired electrons, giving both the metal and its ions a high magnetic susceptibility. This has led to applications in data storage devices, such as compact discs. Dysprosium has a high thermal neutron absorption cross-section, meaning that it is very good at absorbing neutrons. Because of this, it is used to make the control rods that are put into nuclear reactors to absorb excess neutrons and stop fission reactions getting out of control. There seem to be a lot of dys- words around at the start of the 21st century, They have the Greek prefix for abnormal or bad - dyslexic, dyspepsia and dysfunctional spring to mind. Dysprosium's not like that, it has many applications and as time goes on it will have even more. Meera Senthilingam So elementally changing the connotations of the greek prefix. That was Simon Cotton explaining the widely applied chemistry of dysprosium. Now next week, a mythological element that appears to be weeping. Jon Steed The element was christened after Niobe the daughter of Tantalus in greek mythology. Niobe had a fairly hard time of it. She was foolish enough to suggest that rather than worshipping invisible gods, it might be a nice idea to appreciate real people for a change. The greek gods weren't very forgiving of this kind of hubris and as a punishment killed if not all then most of her twelve children - the Niobids. As a result Niobe fled to mount Sipylus and was turned to stone. There is to this day a rock formation in the Aegean region of Turkey termed the weeping rock that resembles a woman's face purportably Niobe's. Water seeps through the porous limestone of the weeping rock and is said to resemble Niobe's unceasing tears at the fate of the Niobids. Meera Senthilingam And move away from the tears to find out the colourful and superconducting chemistry of the element niobium with Jon Steed in next week's Chemistry in its Element. Until then I'm Meera Senthilingam, thanks for listening and goodbye. (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.
