Dysprosium

Dysprosium was discovered in 1886 by Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, a French chemist who also discovered samarium, europium, and gallium. Lecoq de Boisbaudran was a self-taught scientist who began his career in a laboratory that he assembled on the second floor of his family’s home. He was a pioneer in the field of spectroscopy, which involved looking at the color of light emitted by burning a substance to determine what the substance was made of. Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s career shows that you don’t need an expensive laboratory to be a scientist! You just have to be passionately curious.

In 1886, Lecoq de Boisbaudran was analyzing a sample of erbium oxide when he noticed that the substance had an unusual spectrum. He proceeded to spend a lot of time trying to separate out the element—so much time, in fact, that he chose to name the element dysprosium, which comes from the Greek word dysprositos, meaning hard to get. Not to be confused with Despacito—though the process was as slow as the song’s title suggests!

It wasn’t until decades later, in 1950, that Frank Spedding at Iowa State University developed a technique to easily separate out dysprosium and other lanthanide elements.

Like other rare earth metals, dysprosium is silvery white and soft enough to cut with a knife. Dysprosium has a high melting point, and it’s very good at absorbing neutrons. At room temperature, it’s stable in air. However, dysprosium is easily dissolved with certain kinds of acids, such as sulfuric acid. Dysprosium is one of the most magnetic elements there is, so it’s a good idea to make sure your keys are still in your pocket after you work with it!

The biggest use of dysprosium is in magnets. In fact, up to 95% of dysprosium is used in magnets. Dysprosium’s ability to be magnetized makes it useful in computer hard discs. Even at high temperatures, dysprosium stays magnetic, which makes it useful for the magnets used in wind turbines or electric car motors. Because more and more electric cars are being produced, demand for dysprosium is growing all the time.

Dysprosium also gets top marks for its ability to absorb neutrons, which is why it’s sometimes used in nuclear reactors. And dysprosium is sometimes used in dosimeters, which help scientists and other people who work with radioactive substances tell how much radiation they're being exposed to.

Dysprosium iodide gets used in metal halide lamps. Mixed in the right way with gallium, aluminum, or iron, dysprosium can be made into a kind of crystal called a garnet, which can be useful in lasers or in a process called magnetic refrigerating (which involves using magnets to make cold temperatures). Mixed with nickel, dysprosium oxide can be used in the control rods of nuclear reactors. Dysprosium oxide is highly magnetic, which is why it’s used in—you guessed it—magnets, among other things.

In nature, dysprosium comes in a few different isotopes—seven of them, to be precise— dysprosium-156, dysprosium-158, dysprosium-160, dysprosium-161, dysprosium-162, dysprosium-163, and dysprosium-164. The most common are dysprosium-164 and dysprosium-162. Around 28% of naturally occurring dysprosium is dysprosium-164, while another 26% is dysprosium-162.

Scientists have made around 30 radioactive isotopes of dysprosium. These radioisotopes have half-lives that range from millions of years down to much less than a second.

Most dysprosium comes from monazite sand, which is extracted using the ion exchange process developed by Frank Spedding’s team in 1950. Most dysprosium comes from China, although in recent years, Australia has begun producing more of the element.