 Discovery Information
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| Who: J.L. Soret |
| When: 1878 |
| Where: Switzerland |
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| Name Origin
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| From Holmia, the Latin name for Stockholm. |
| "Holmium" in different languages. |
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| Sources
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| Occurs in gadolinite ((Ce,La,Nd,Y)2FeBe2Si2O10), monazite and other rare-earth minerals. Annual production is around 10 tons.
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| Abundance
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| Universe: 0.0005 ppm (by weight) |
| Carbonaceous meteorite: 0.06 ppm |
| Earth's Crust: 1.4 ppm |
| Seawater: |
| Atlantic surface: 2.4 x 10-7 ppm
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| Atlantic deep: 2.9 x 10-7 ppm
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| Pacific surface: 1.6 x 10-7 ppm
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| Pacific deep: 1.6 x 10-7 ppm
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| Uses
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| As control-rods for nuclear reactors because it readily absorbs neutrons. Forms highly magnetic compounds when combined with yttrium. Holmium oxide is used as a yellow glass colouring.
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| Its very high magnetic moment is suitable for use in yttrium-iron-garnet (YIG) and yttrium-lanthanum-fluoride (YLF) solid state lasers found in microwave equipment (which are in turn found in a variety of medical and dental settings).
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| History
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| Holmium (Holmia, Latin name for Stockholm) was discovered by Marc Delafontaine and Jacques-Louis Soret in 1878 who noticed the aberrant spectrographic absorption bands of the then-unknown element (they called it "Element X").
Later in 1878, Per Teodor Cleve independently discovered the element while he was working on erbia earth (erbium oxide).
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| Using the method developed by Carl Gustaf Mosander, Cleve first removed all of the known contaminants from erbia. The result of that effort was two new materials, one brown and one
green. He named the brown substance holmia (after the Latin name for Cleve's home town, Stockholm) and the green one thulia. Holmia was later found to be the holmium oxide and thulia was thulium oxide.
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| Notes
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| The element, as with other rare earth elements, appears to have a low acute toxic rating. Holmium plays no biological role in humans but may be able to stimulate metabolism.
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