Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Erbium salts

Erbium salts

vano - 30-12-2021 at 05:18

Hi Lion850!

Nice! can you show me your erbium compounds?

Lion850 - 30-12-2021 at 15:05

Vano - as requested photos of the Erbium compounds I made.

vano - 30-12-2021 at 22:58

Quote: Originally posted by Lion850

Vano - as requested photos of the Erbium compounds I made.

Very good compounds. Thank you so much!

MidLifeChemist - 3-1-2022 at 17:17

Quote: Originally posted by Lion850

Vano - as requested photos of the Erbium compounds I made.

Very nice! I have some erbium oxide. How did you make the Erbium bromide?

vano - 3-1-2022 at 23:33

I wonder how easy it is to get dry chloride crystalhydrate. As I see you could not get dry bromide, it was the same in my case with samarium chloride.

Texium - 4-1-2022 at 08:50

I split this out of the ferric oxalate thread since it is entirely off-topic. vano, please avoid completely changing the subject of a thread. These posts would be very hard to find later on if I had left them in the other thread, and it was already getting hard to follow since two discussions were happening simultaneously.

Lion850 - 5-1-2022 at 00:28

MidLifeChemist to make the erbium bromide, a double displacement reaction was performed between a calcium bromide solution and an erbium sulphate solution. This caused calcium sulphate to precipitate. After filtering the filtrate (clear pinkish solution) was reduced in volume be slow boiling until it started to crystalize. It was then put into a desiccator for 48 hours, and while it did dry further it was still a wet paste. As shown in the photo. It will probably need to be placed in a sealed container with a drying agent for quite a while to get dry crystals.

MidLifeChemist - 5-1-2022 at 21:14

Quote: Originally posted by Lion850

MidLifeChemist to make the erbium bromide, a double displacement reaction was performed between a calcium bromide solution and an erbium sulphate solution. This caused calcium sulphate to precipitate. After filtering the filtrate (clear pinkish solution) was reduced in volume be slow boiling until it started to crystalize. It was then put into a desiccator for 48 hours, and while it did dry further it was still a wet paste. As shown in the photo. It will probably need to be placed in a sealed container with a drying agent for quite a while to get dry crystals.

Ok thanks! I'll have to try to get my erbium oxide to react with my sulfuric acid then, the erbium bromide looked nice.

TyppiHappo - 7-1-2022 at 07:26

Lion850, nice erbium compounds! You could try taking two pictures, one in natural (or incandescent) light and one from a fluorescent light bulb, in order to observe the color change. It's not as dramatic as neodymium or holmium salts, but still worth noting.

I made some REE bromides (holmium, thulium and gadolinium) several days ago and now I'm trying to dry the concentrated solutions in a desiccator over NaOH. It takes a long time. I really hope I can get crystals of them. I will definitely make erbium bromide in the near future. The method I use is just dissolving the REE oxide in 48% HBr and few mLs of water.

Erbium Acetate

Bezaleel - 9-1-2022 at 17:45

A crystals and rare earth fan, I need to add a picture of the Er(AcO)3.4H2O I made in 2010.

It crystallises from solution, but the solution may stay in supersaturation for quite some time (days, up to even a fortnight).

I would definitely grow a large crystal from it, if it weren't so terribly hard to obtain a well-shaped seed crystal.

nezza - 27-1-2022 at 07:46

Here's a reaction matrix I did on a plate. Not the best picture, but it includes some Erbium salts.