Discovery date : 1843
Discovered by: Carl Gustav Mosander
Origin of the name: Erbium is named after Ytterby, Sweden.
Allotropes :
~>ERBIUM is a chemical element with symbol Er and atomic number 68. A silvery-white solid metal when artificially isolated, natural erbium is always found in chemical combination with other elements.
| FACT BOX | |||
| Group | Lanthanides | Melting point | 1529°C, 2784°F, 1802 K |
| Period | 6 | Boiling point | 2868°C, 5194°F, 3141 K |
| Block | f | Density (g cm−3) | 9.07 |
| Atomic number | 68 | Relative atomic mass | 167.259 |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 166Er |
| Electron configuration | [Xe] 4f126s2 | CAS number | 7440-52-0 |
| ChemSpider ID | 22416 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
In 1843, at Stockholm, Carl Mosander obtained two new metal oxides from yttrium, which had been know since 1794. One of these was erbium oxide, which was pink. (The other was terbium oxide, which was yellow.) While erbium was one of the first lanthanoid elements to be discovered, the picture is clouded because early samples of this element must have contained other rare-earths. We know this because In1878 Jean-Charles Galissard de Marignac, working at the University of Geneva, extracted another element from erbium and called it ytterbium. (This too was impure and scandium was extracted from it a year later.)
A sample of pure erbium metal was not produced until 1934, when Wilhelm Klemm and Heinrich Bommer achieved it by heating purified erbium chloride with potassium.