Ytterbium is a silver metal with an atomic number of 70, meaning there are 70 protons in its nucleus. ... Ytterbium has seven natural isotopes and twenty seven artificial isotopes.

Is yttrium man made or natural?

Yttrium never occurs in nature as a free element. It is found in almost all rare earth minerals and in uranium ores. The yellow-brown ore xenotime can contain as much as 50% yttrium phophate (YPO4) and is mined in Malaysia.

Does ytterbium occur naturally?

Ytterbium is among the less-abundant rare earths. ... Natural ytterbium consists of seven stable isotopes: ytterbium-174 (32.0 percent), ytterbium-172 (21.7 percent), ytterbium-173 (16.1 percent), ytterbium-171 (14.1 percent), ytterbium-176 (13 percent), ytterbium-170 (3 percent), and ytterbium-168 (0.1 percent).

How is ytterbium made?

Ytterbium is produced from its ores by reaction with lanthanum metal. For example, the element is extracted by solvent extraction and ion exchange from monazite.

What is the source of ytterbium?

Sources of ytterbium

Ytterbium occurs along with other rare earths in a number of rare minerals. It is commercially recovered principally from monazite sand, which contains about 0.03 percent. Ion-exchange and solvent extraction techniques have simplified the separation of the rare earths from one another.

What is YTTERBIUM? What does YTTERBIUM mean? YTTERBIUM meaning, definition & explanation

Where is ytterbium commonly found?

Ytterbium is found with other rare-earth elements in several rare minerals. It is most often recovered commercially from monazite sand (0.03% ytterbium). The element is also found in euxenite and xenotime. The main mining areas are China, the United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, and Australia.

Is ytterbium rare or common?

Ytterbium is the 44th most abundant element in the Earth's crust. It is one of the more common rare earths, present at about 2.7 to 8 parts per million in the crust. It is common in the mineral monazite.

What is the difference between yttrium and ytterbium?

As nouns the difference between ytterbium and yttrium

is that ytterbium is a metallic chemical element (symbol yb) with an atomic number of 70 while yttrium is a metallic chemical element (symbol y) with an atomic number of 39.

What is ytterbium element family?

Ytterbium belongs to the lanthanide family. The lanthanides make up Row 6 of the periodic table. The periodic table is a chart that shows how the chemical elements are related to each other. The lanthanides are also known as the rare earth elements.

How is ytterbium used today?

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.

What is the 70th element?

Ytterbium is a chemical element with symbol Yb and atomic number 70.

How much is ytterbium worth?

It is expected that the price of ytterbium oxide will reach some 69 U.S. dollars per kilogram in 2017.

What is the noble gas for YB?

The ground state electronic configuration of Neutral Ytterbium atom is [Xe] 4f14 6s2. The portion of Ytterbium configuration that is equivalent to the noble gas of the preceding period, is abbreviated as [Xe].

How is yttrium processed?

Today, yttrium is primarily obtained through an ion exchange process from monazite sand ((Ce, La, Th, Nd, Y)PO₄), a material rich in rare earth elements. ... Yttrium oxide (Y₂O₃) and yttrium orthovanadate (YVO₄) are both combined with europium to produce the red phosphor used in color televisions.

How is yttrium mined?

It is obtained by mining the minerals bastnasite, fergusonite, monazite, samarskite and xenotime, which are mined in the USA, China, Australia, India and Brazil.

What type of rock is yttrium?

Yttrium occurs especially in the heavy rare-earth ores, of which laterite clays, gadolinite, euxenite, and xenotime are the most important. In the igneous rocks of Earth's crust, this element is more plentiful than any of the other rare-earth elements except cerium and is twice as abundant as lead.

What are some compounds that are made from ytterbium?

The only ytterbium compound of historical commercial use is ytterbium oxide (Yb2O3); this is used to make alloys and special types of glass and ceramics.

What does ytterbium look like?

Ytterbium is a bright, soft, silvery-white metal that is both ductile and malleable. It is a one of the rare earth metals. The metal tarnishes quickly in air and reacts slowly with water.

Is ytterbium flammable?

Specific Hazards Arising from the Material: Flammable in the form of dust when exposed to heat, spark or flame. May react with water under fire conditions liberating flammable hydrogen gas. May emit fumes of ytterbium oxide under fire conditions. ... Use only non-sparking tools and natural bristle brushes.

Which is the rarest element on the Earth?

A team of researchers using the ISOLDE nuclear-physics facility at CERN has measured for the first time the so-called electron affinity of the chemical element astatine, the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth.

What element has 70 neutrons?

Now all tin isotopes have 50 nuclear protons, and 50 electrons; we know this from the atomic number of Sn, Z=50 . 120Sn has 70 neutrons, 70 massive, neutrally charged nuclear particles.