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Element · Y

Yttrium

The element behind red phosphors and the first high-temperature superconductor.

Yttrium compounds were the red phosphor in colour television for decades, and yttrium aluminium garnet is the host crystal in the commonest solid-state laser.

Its most consequential appearance was in 1987, when yttrium barium copper oxide became the first material found to superconduct above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. That threshold matters commercially rather than physically: liquid nitrogen is cheap and liquid helium is not.

Name origin

After Ytterby, a quarry in Sweden that gave its name to four elements — yttrium, ytterbium, terbium and erbium — more than any other place on Earth.

Uses

Yttrium's uses are mostly as a component in compounds that do the work. Yttrium aluminium garnet is the host crystal of the Nd:YAG laser, found in industrial cutting, ophthalmic surgery and rangefinding.

Yttria-stabilised zirconia is the tough ceramic used in thermal barrier coatings on turbine blades, in oxygen sensors, and in dental ceramics — the yttria prevents the zirconia from cracking as it cools. Yttrium phosphors produced the red in colour television and now feature in white LEDs and fluorescent lighting.

Medium confidence Weak evidence

How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.

How this connects

Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.

is used as

  • Lighting — application · as the red phosphor in displays and lamps

is produced by

  • Rare earth separation — process · a heavy rare earth; the separation is the same cascade, run longer because the differences are smaller

is extracted from

  • Xenotime — mineral · the principal source of yttrium and of the heavy rare earths that resemble it Wikidata

is found in

  • Yttrium aluminium garnet — compound · the cation the dopant substitutes for — a rare earth ion of similar size slots into the yttrium site, which is what makes YAG a host at all
  • Phosphor — material · the host lattice of the red phosphor rather than the emitter — yttrium oxysulfide and vanadate carry the europium
  • Zirconia — compound · a few per cent as yttria, holding the tetragonal phase in place so the transformation can be used rather than suffered
  • Xenotime — mineral Wikidata

Sources

  • Material World
    Our own writing
  • Wikidata
    Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
  • PubChem
    US National Library of Medicine · Mixed — aggregated third-party content, rights retained by depositors
  • NIST — National Institute of Standards and Technology
    United States Department of Commerce · US Government work — public information, credit requested

Questions this page answers

Where it comes from, and what it becomes

Follow Yttrium back to what it starts as, and forward into what it becomes. Each step is a documented one — a real route material takes, not a chain of inference.

Upstream — what it comes from

  • Yttrium → is produced by (a heavy rare earth; the separation is the same cascade, run longer because the differences are smaller) → Rare earth separation → takes as input (the principal ore of the light rare earths, carrying all of them together) → Bastnäsite
  • Yttrium → is extracted from (the principal source of yttrium and of the heavy rare earths that resemble it) → Xenotime
  • Yttrium → is produced by (a heavy rare earth; the separation is the same cascade, run longer because the differences are smaller) → Rare earth separation → takes as input (the other feed alongside bastnäsite, bringing thorium into the residues with it) → Monazite
  • Yttrium → is produced by (a heavy rare earth; the separation is the same cascade, run longer because the differences are smaller) → Rare earth separation → takes as input (the heavy rare earth feed, where monazite and bastnäsite bring the light ones) → Xenotime

Downstream — what it becomes

  • Yttrium → is used as (as the red phosphor in displays and lamps) → Lighting