All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 39, a transition metal
The first element pulled out of the ores of Ytterby, a Swedish village that gave its name to four elements.
Period 5, group 3. The other transition metals are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
Yttrium gives up three electrons to form Y³⁺, and it behaves so much like the lanthanides that it is counted among the rare earth elements.
Found with the lanthanides in rare earth ores such as xenotime, monazite and ion-adsorption clays, mostly in China. Rocks brought back from the Moon are unusually rich in it.
Johan Gadolin identified a new earth, yttria, in 1794 in a black mineral from the Ytterby quarry near Stockholm, and Friedrich Wöhler isolated the metal in 1828. The same village also named ytterbium, terbium and erbium.
Yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) crystals make the phosphors in white LEDs and the lasers used in surgery and metal cutting. Yttria-stabilized zirconia makes tough ceramics, dental crowns and the oxygen sensors in car exhausts, and yttrium barium copper oxide was one of the first superconductors to work at liquid nitrogen temperature.