lutetium

lutetium (Lu), chemical element, a rare-earth metal of the lanthanide series of the periodic table, that is the densest and the highest-melting rare-earth element and the last member of the lanthanide series.

In its pure form, lutetium metal is silvery white and stable in air. The metal is easily dissolved in diluted acids—except hydrofluoric acid (HF), in which a protective layer of LuF³ forms on the surface and prevents the metal from further dissolution. The metal is paramagnetic from 0 K (−273 °C, or −460 °F) to its melting point at 1,936 K (1,663 °C, or 3,025 °F) with a temperature-independent magnetic susceptibility between approximately 4 and 300 K (−269 and 27 °C, or −452 and 80 °F). It becomes superconducting at 0.022 K (−273.128 °C, or −459.63 °F) and pressures exceeding 45 kilobars.

Lutetium was discovered in 1907–08 by Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach and Georges Urbain, working independently. Urbain derived the name for the element from Lutetia, the ancient Roman name for Paris, to honour his native city. The name lutetium became widely accepted except in Germany, where it was commonly called cassiopeium until the 1950s. One of the rarest of the rare earths, lutetium occurs in rare-earth minerals such as laterite clays, xenotime, and euxenite. Though lutetium composes only trace mounts (less than 0.1 percent by weight) of the commercially important minerals bastnasite and monazite, it has proved feasible to extract the metal as a by-product. Lutetium is also found in the products of nuclear fission.

Natural lutetium consists of two isotopes: stable lutetium-175 (97.4 percent) and radioactive lutetium-176 (2.6 percent, 3.76 × 10¹⁰-year half-life). The radioactive isotope is used to determine the age of meteorites relative to that of Earth. In addition to lutetium-176, and not counting nuclear isomers, 33 more radioactive isotopes of lutetium are known. They range in mass from 150 to 184; the least stable isotope (lutetium-150) has a half-life of 45 milliseconds, and the most stable isotope is lutetium-176.

Separation and purification are accomplished by liquid-liquid extraction or ion-exchange techniques. The metal is prepared by metallothermic reduction of the anhydrous halides by alkali or alkaline-earth metals. Lutetium is monomorphic and has a close-packed hexagonal structure with a = 3.5052 Å and c = 5.5494 Å at room temperature.

Lutetium is used in research. Its compounds are used as hosts for scintillators and X-ray phosphors, and the oxide is used in optical lenses. The element behaves as a typical rare earth, forming a series of compounds in oxidation state +3, such as lutetium sesquioxide, sulfate, and chloride.