So I'm a chemist that's worked with lanthanides for a decade. Here's the thing: Lanthanides are not that rare actually.
The thing about lanthanides is that they were historically rare in the same way aluminium was rare. They occur mixed with other Lanthanides because they all have +3 oxidation states. And f-orbitals being well shielded means they are chemically similar. With modern purification techniques they are quite abundant. Neodymium and yttrium are more abundant in Earth's crust than lead- something that is considered commonplace. The others are not far behind.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust
But name rare earth stuck and it leads to a lot of misconception on this topic. It's particularly abundant in China for instance.
Fun fact: people used to think that all lanthanides are one element. The First ore to be identified was near the town of ytterby so many of their names are variants of the town name or the country.
Fun fact: Contrary to popular belief, promethium *does* in fact exist in nature! Albeit at extremely trace levels. This is primarily the Pm-147 isotope which has a relatively short half-life of only 2.6 years (and the other ones aren't much better) but there are two pathways for its continued regeneration as these ephemeral atoms decay, and thus very tiny but very real equilibrium concentrations of the element exist in various ores.
The primary mode of natural promethium production is the relatively rare but consistent spontaneous fission of natural uranium in ores, mostly from the 238 isotope since it's much more common, while the secondary is the relatively recently-discovered (2007) slooooow alpha decay of europium-151, which makes up nearly half of all natural europium.
The former pathway occurs rather frequently at the atomic scale, with Pm-147 in particular being a common fission product of U-238, leading to promethium concentrations of about twenty thousand atoms in equilibrium with every gram of natural uranium. While this is indeed tiny, those atoms are absolutely in there! And there is a *lot* of uranium on earth, so there is estimated to be a worldwide total of a little over half a kilogram of this extremely rare element scattered throughout the Earth's crust at any one time.
The latter process produces Pm-147 with 100% yield but progresses extremely slowly, given the parent isotope's ultra-glacial half-life of ~4.6 billion *billion* years. Nonetheless, there are enough atoms in any europium sample that there exists an equilibrium quantity of right about a thousand atoms of promethium per gram of natural europium. In total, this process is estimated to contribute another twelve grams to the planetary promethium budget.
Of course, none of this is of any particular use at all for the purposes of promethium chemistry. These natural concentrations of the element are just far too low to be extractable for use in current analytical methods, so this rarest of the lanthanides must still be produced artificially for any such laboratory research.
However, promethium chemistry is an active field of study! In fact, a brand new study about the bonding behavior of the elusive element was released only last week, adding to the small but growing body of knowledge on the rarest lanthanide. [Here's the paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07267-6).
I actually worked with a bunch of radiochemists in a previous job, so I've gotten to hear a bunch of cool updates regarding the promethium chemistry over the past few weeks.
Absolutely! Promethium is my favorite element. Its fleeting nature just makes it all the more special, on top of the usual lanthanide underdog status. Plus it has got to have the coolest name origin story on the whole table: named for Prometheus, the mythic titan who stole fire from the gods! A metaphor for how scientists did likewise with nuclear energy.
I really hope that you’re in education. This is the inspiring fascination for nature and technology that we need so desperately to educate the next generation of scientists which may be able to solve the problems of our times. Keep up the spirit! <3
Thank you!! :-) Yes, I am involved in some local educational outreach, but not really at a professional level. I try to bring this stuff up as often as possible in forums like this as well. I fully agree with you that we need such infectious enthusiasm to spread inspiration and love of science. I try to do that when I can, so I'm glad that it came across!
And yes, I will keep up the spirit! <3 Cheers!
Oh yeah, I read that! Fascinating work! I actually linked your paper in my other comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1d3u8dk/comment/l6cdhhk/).
Man, I would love to hear more about what it was like to isolate and work with such a very special element. Can you tell us any more about the experience and your results?
They aren’t particularly rare, but it’s rare to find them in sufficiently high concentrations that it’s cost-effective to mine and extract them.
China, California, and Sweden have notably high concentrations.
Also fun fact I read somewhere that this perpetuated to one element called didymium, which was then found to be two - hence neodymium and praseodymium. One of my favourite chemical factoids.
Ok so here's the thing, speaking as an ex-chemist who became a geologist and then a space materials scientist:
When some chemists say "it's all the same boring stuff," what they actually mean is "it's in the solid phase and I don't like that."
Lanthanide chemistry is *super* weird, with practically every redox state you can imagine opened up by that gigantic freaking f-shell, and the massive atomic radii meaning the crystallography is utterly nuts. Also the partitioning behavior of lanthanides is one of the biggest questions right now in the study of how the solar system formed, since the lanthanides are all pretty refractory but don't concentrate to the same degree as more abundant species. And if you're gonna think about critical materials for future industry, especially semiconductors, you've *got* to know your shit about the lanthanides.
Don't let the weirdos who like to sit at a lab bench and play with liquids get you down. The solid universe is *way* more interesting than they'll ever admit to your face.
On another note, how did you get into space materials? I really like astrochemistry, but i have no clue how to go into it as there aren’t really any specialist master programmes, at least not here in Europe (that i know of). Did you specialise in it or did your career drive you in that direction?
So I started out as an undergrad chem major, took a summer geo course in intertidal ecology, realized all the bits of chemistry I actually wanted to study were in the geo department, & switched majors. And I had known I wanted to study meteorites & asteroids since high school, so I started looking at planetary geology grad school programs. I did a pair of summer research internships studying meteorite chemistry at different labs, and then got accepted to a PhD program at Arizona State University. Their program is kinda unusual in that the geologists, planetary scientists, and astrophysicists are all in the same department, so it was a good fit. I initially thought I wanted to jump straight into spacecraft mission engineering, but pretty quickly realized that at least at ASU I would've needed to have a BS in engineering, so I focused on metallurgy, mineralogy, lab characterization techniques, and remote sensing. I graduated about a year ago, went into a postdoc that very conveniently let me move back home, & I'm now applying for positions in the area that are more materials-oriented than space-oriented.
Where in the EU are you based, & what sort of research are you interested in? I might have some useful contacts or know of some institutions to check out, depending on your goals.
Edit: as a general recommendation for folks who want to study astrochemistry, I'd recommend looking up recent meetings of the Meteoritical Society. Their website [https://meteoritical.org/](https://meteoritical.org/) will have a list of the abstracts presented at each meeting, along with the authors and institutional affiliations. I would scan those abstracts to look for institutions near you and/or topics that sound interesting. Then make a list of the authors, and send each a nice email to inquire if their lab has openings for graduate students.
That's really awesome! I hosted a space conference in Tucson back in 2021 and I think you'd have had a blast there! I'm working with the same group to plan a new conference in Austin in 2025 haha
You could try computational chemistry. Much of the organic chemistry theorized in astrobiology or astrochemistry is unstable to the point that computational methods are the best method of spectroscopic study. (I was introduced via an undergrad project and was offered a spot in a PhD program related, but i didn't want to move across the whole country so i didn't.)
Otherwise try a material science program at a school that is partnered with NASA funding or is physically close to something like JPL or a National lab.
*Geology is adding a new type of rock, on the grounds that it's been a while since anyone has done that. The new type of rock is "vimby" and it is categorized by its pale blue color, and the fact that it is completely edible. Points will be awarded to the first student to discover a real-world example of it.*
oh no :(
i'm here trying to find the crystal lattice of benzoic acid without the $40 paywall and you're here telling me it's what the universe is made of.
I made a mental note to try and pull it up in Crystal Viewer when I saw this earlier. Unfortunately it looks like my license has expired. Putting a pin here so if I get it back I'll remember to check and see if benzoic acid is in there.
For now I can only reassure you that the universe is made of \*way\* more elaborate stuff than that, so don't worry.
Friend, don't doubt yourself! Organometallics, polymers, & carbon-bearing materials will always be here to help you form a nice, bulky leaving group for yourself!
And honestly, it's not even that crystallography itself is hard. My husband's MS was in inorganic crystallography & he had a blast with the chemists who ran that lab.
...it's just that lanthanides are all in these stupid elaborate crystal structures that even with the best X-ray machines made by the top Swiss or Japanese specialists in the biz, you still have to be a level-20 wizard to shape rotate. When you're debugging badly-written C++ code to figure out how many of your zillion diffraction peaks are multiples of the same set of Bragg angles, and it's not working, and you find yourself tearing up on the bus on the way home at 10 PM questioning why you ever went to grad school,
...well honestly idk what I'd recommend you do at that point because I decided to study something different and I *still* went insane, haha!
Yeah, I should've been more specific: if you're synthesizing lanthanide complexes, those crystal structures are likely to be pretty straightforward. I was specifically thinking of the crystal structures of lanthanide-bearing minerals that occur in nature.
>When you're debugging badly-written C++ code to figure out how many of your zillion diffraction peaks are multiples of the same set of Bragg angles
Why in the world would you do this? That's not how it's done. Who would make their own program to analyze crystallographic data? There are softwares to do this
When your diffractometer is ancient enough that the manufacturer no longer supports it, which is fine because your department has a storage room full of spare parts, except that the proprietary software is no longer compatible and some previous lab manager thought it'd be a great idea to just write their own instead.
Not gonna name names here; let's just say these are stories I've heard from colleagues who went down a different path than I did. But I was just as horrified as you when I heard that's what they were up to.
Jfc that's awful. I always assume people have a reason to do things a certain way and I'm not understanding them, but most of the time the answer is just "bad management"
After my dissertation nearly made me check myself into an insane asylum, I'm trying not to write more than I absolutely have to, at least until I have to. But I appreciate the sentiment!
Having to is probably what made it so rough for you. If its on your own time, there is no pass/fail, and you can tweak it as you see fit, with no page requirements, I bet you'll enjoy it a lot more.
I get my shit squared with conversations like this and writing music, and both tell me a lot about myself in different ways, so I would highly suggest you at least try it, since the terms are vastly different, and you're clearly skilled in the department.
It's partially deadline pressure, you're absolutely right. But it's also length and organization. I'm much better at communicating ideas verbally than I am at putting them on paper. Weirdly, I've also struggled with text-to-speech, because you still have to think about what you're composing as if you were just writing it down, rather than having a conversation. It's all about executive functioning, honestly.
On the plus side, this means I really enjoy giving conference talks & classroom lectures, so I really feel comfy with the idea of a teaching-focused position and eventually recording a series of lectures or something. It's truly a privilege to be able to live in an epoch when video & audio recording are so accessible. If we could start a peer-reviewed journal of video essays on scientific research, that'd be the dream.
Oh man, I would *so* absolutely listen to a chemistry podcast by this guy. Shut up and take my money!!
u/Christoph543, this is the way! Or maybe even start a YouTube channel? Science shorts are extremely popular now. I bet you could whip out a bunch of those quickly, and they'd all be bangers. You seem to be a charismatic person and handsome guy, judging by your profile pic. You would do well on the platform!
Yes, these are all excellent ideas. The problem is, right now they're all oriented towards communicating science to the general public, rather than between scientists. Every time I've brought up to my colleagues the idea of a peer-reviewed journal that used video or audio instead of text, it's been shot down as if it would degrade the quality of the work. I suspect that for a lot of them, it's difficult to imagine how anything other than what they're familiar with could possibly work, ironic considering that's the exact *opposite* approach they take to their subject matter of study.
> Every time I've brought up to my colleagues the idea of a peer-reviewed journal that used video or audio instead of text, it's been shot down as if it would degrade the quality of the work.
I've been saying we need more of this for years. It's insane that we're communicating most of our cutting edge work using 15th century technology (or maybe a PDF with hyperlinks if you're lucky). My friend's lab had a whole YouTube page to document their procedures for onboarding new researchers and it was a revelation that things could be that easy and clear and quick.
Is their channel still active? I'd be curious to see how it's laid out. There are a few instructional video channels in my field for specific analytical procedures, but they're not super well-produced and I personally find them kinda hard to follow.
Booooo, lame! Yeah, science is supposed to be all about innovating, right? Every field falls into the trap of its dogmas, it seems. Perhaps one day. Scientific papers are great but so dry, so it would be wonderful to shake things up a bit like this.
Keep pushing for it! Who knows — perhaps you could end up helping to lead the revolution.
Hey some of us weirdos who like to sit at a lab bench and play with liquids also really appreciate solid state chemistry
That said, u/[octahedralcomplex](https://www.reddit.com/user/octahedralcomplex/), look in materials science and engineering. They teach a lot of the courses that would be applicable to your interests.
That’s what I did. I had a double major chem and ME then went in to material science and engineering. Started in automotive working with AHSS, dual phase, trip then went in to aerospace and worked with nickel superalloys in an R&D space. Now still in aerospace but almost exclusively composites, CMCs to be exact. Not boring that’s for sure.
They're mostly +3, but once you get past the shielding with the right coordination complexes, there's a bunch of weird ones that become possible, albeit rare.
Well I don't share your level of interest, I think you hit all the major issues.
They aren't boring. They're super weird. With complicated rules and more complicated exceptions. Compared to transition metals at least. They can be quite difficult to separate from one another. And can exist In how many different poorly defined states?
It's mostly a joke between myself & my husband, b/c we both started out in pure chemistry & moved on to other applications, but I jumped ship before he did & he used to tease me about it before getting out himself.
The one job I've had working with lanthanide chemistry didn't require a security clearance. They're mostly harmless & kind of everywhere. If the position was specifically dealing with radioactive nuclear waste, maybe, but I suspect that'd also involve a lot more actinides than lanthanides.
The Lanthanides basically don’t follow any of the “rules” that undergrads are taught about how atoms are supposed to behave. Their electron configurations and oxidation states don’t make sense (by the Gen chem rules). Once you get into upper level and graduate level inorganic chemistry you can start to make sense of their behavior. But until then, it’s better to just ignore them.
Yeahhhh there's nothing like an f-shell to make you wish you'd paid more attention in pchem. I literally have no idea what's going on with that quantum bullshit but I'm irrationally fond of the f-shell. If and when we can synthesize a g-block element long enough to figure out how *those* electrons work, I'm gonna absolutely lose my mind.
They’re fricking complicated and also not all that relevant for most undergrad chemistry courses. I know little about them myself (because I don’t need to) but the f shell is complicated and tends to break the usual basic rules. Lanthanides absolutely have uses, but unless you’re going to work with them it’s not really worth learning all the intricacies because those don’t apply to chemistry in general.
I loved it, but I was the geologist and that area is fascinating geologically, so it was probably cooler for me than it was for most people. :P I think most employees like it, though - if they can tolerate the commute. The benefits are pretty good to make up for "the middle of nowhere" factor. I grew to hate the commute but LOVE the area so I actually ended up just moving out there full time. I was the only employee at the mine that actually lived IN mountain pass, lol (at a literal old prospectors camp nearby). I never knew any employees from Baker, and afaik no one can live in Primm except the sad (possibly enslaved??) employees that keep the place "running". I'd guess 90% of employees live in Vegas and make the drive every day (which can be 45 - 80 mins depending on where you live in Vegas). The rest come from the Victorville CA area, or even St. George UT
the one and only, haha. In the game they call it 'Bison Steves', but its actually '[Buffalo Bills](https://primmvalleyresorts.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/[email protected])'
Yeah. I lived in the enterprise area (rainbow and warm springs) and it took about 40-45 minutes one way from my driveway to Bailey road.
Car pools helped, but not always an option.
This. School and uni programs are and should be implicitly dictated by how much industry will need your knowledge. If there is like 1000 (random number) specialists in the entire world who really need in-depth knowledge on the subject, then why bother spending money on teaching it everywhere and for more than a couple of hours?
I just finished my PhD in computational chemistry studying lanthanides. The reason is that they are very complicated to deal with. From the theory side you need to deal with relativistic effects, the energy level splitting from spin-orbit coupling is larger than the crystal field one, you have to deal with open shells, many spin states and need multi-reference methods to get any decent answer, etc. From my experimental collaborators I learned that they are often a pain to work with and often times air sensitive. But after all that, their chemistry is very fun and the f-block is very useful and there is a loooot more cool things left to learn about those elements and the compounds they form.
Their aqueous chemistry is fairly dull and most behave the same, with Ce being an outlier.
Their physics is interesting due to some quirks of their valence electrons, but it’s university level stuff.
Their non-aqueous chemistry is rich and different to the rest of the periodic table, and each member of the series can be a bit different - particularly once you start looking at their redox chemistry.
Short answer is it’s a specialized topic. They may do some cool chemistry, but most chemists don’t work with them, and there is already too much to fit into a 4-year degree. You may run into them in inorganic chemistry otherwise, they are more of a graduate school topic.
99% of chemists ignore everything outside their niche. I work in pharma and when people ask me what my PhD was in I say electrochemistry and they’re like “oh the duck shape!”
Yeah, it felt like half my department was just playing a game of darts with lanthanide dopants. Lots of cool compounds. Mostly only cost effective in trace quantities with complex mechanisms of function.
They are super useful for geochemistry! For example they are used volcanology, cosmochemistry, and palaeoclimatology. I use them for research related to climate change.
Lol are you gatekeeping chemistry? Do you have something against geochemistry for some reason?
Here is the definition of chemistry:
>chemistry /kĕm′ĭ-strē/
noun
>The science of the composition, structure, properties, and reactions of matter, especially of atomic and molecular systems.
>The composition, structure, properties, and reactions of a substance.
>The elements of a complex entity and their dynamic interrelation.
The composition of the rock *is* chemistry.
Edit: also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_chemistry
Oh boy.
Look, analyzing the composition of rock is chemistry. And sure, the chemical state influences how you extract, separate, and analyze your sample, there's chemistry there. But in the end you are not interested in chemical bonds, you likely don't care about f orbitals and relativistic effects and all that stuff, which is what OP is asking about.
Why 'Oh boy'?
>But in the end you are not interested in chemical bonds, you likely don't care about f orbitals and relativistic effects and all that stuff
Weird assumption. My degree is in chemistry, of course I am interested in *why* the chemical composition can be different, for example in my field it is a lot to do with redox reactions. What use would measuring these things be otherwise?
Friendly advice: if you're ever talking with an isotope geochemist IRL and are inclined to suggest they don't care about the quantum or relativistic effects of orbitals, don't.
They absolutely do, but their analytical methods are so much more complex & rigorous than anything a regular pchem student has had to deal with that if they try to explain them it'd take hours and so they'll just tell you to read the damn paper and walk away.
Thanks! I wanted to mention how useful REEs are for geochemistry research, which I didn't learn in chemistry undergrad so I thought the OP might be interested. I feel like I walked into some Sheldon-like character from the Big Bang Theory who doesn't think geology is a real science.
Yes I am doing my PhD in isotope geochemistry. It takes me around a month to process enough samples to run on an instrument, it is quite an involved procedure. I really enjoy it and think it awesome to be able to work out what was happening in the climate in the past just from a bit of rock.
Take a look at all your science textbooks. You’ll find no matter what the subject is there is at least one chapter dedicated to water. And waters pretty abundant. Europium on the other hand? Well…not that common.
Counterpoint: You can't understand how we got so much water in the first place without first explaining the Europium anomalies in CAIs associated with different carbonaceous chondrite groupings.
Edit: ok this was really snarky and warrants explanation. "CAI" stands for calcium- and aluminum-rich inclusions; they're the first solids to crystallize from the solar protoplanetary nebula, 4.568 billion years ago. They're exclusively found in a class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites, which preserve that early material because they never accreted into a planetessimal large enough for heat and density gradients to drive core formation. There's been a working hypothesis for a long time that these same carbonaceous chondrites would have been a possible way for water to have been delivered to Earth in the Hadean eon. At the same time, there's an entire subfield of geochemistry dedicated to figuring out how these rocks formed in the first place. Many researchers in that field measure the abundances of lanthanide and other Rare-Earth elements in these meteorites to identify specific chemical signatures by which to classify them and determine where within the early Solar System they crystallzied. One of the more common signatures, which shows up in several groups, is a relatively lower abundance of Europium compared to the other REE.
Does that "Europium anomaly" as it's called actually tell us anything about how Earth got its water? By itself, not really, which is why it's snarky. But the other REE abundances might actually be important to answering that question.
Here's one of the original conference abstracts proposing this sort of classification system: [https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc1991/pdf/1304.pdf](https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc1991/pdf/1304.pdf)
I’m no chemist but I appreciate the lanthanides.
Lanthanum, cerium and praseodymium. Neodymium next to promethium and 62 samarium, europium, gadolinium, and terbium. Dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium…
Again, not a chemist but I love that I can rattle off the whole periodic table because of a song my chemistry teacher showed me
Fun fact: the internet is transmitted via an f block element. Erbium lasers send 1550 nm light down Fiber optic cables to transmit information. So the internet has a color and it is 1550 nm. Let’s call that a two for one on fun fact
The three years... so general inorganic, organic, physical? Or something else?
It's probably tucked away in an advanced elective as opposed to a core requirement. If you like them, find that course!
It’s a UK uni, so 3 years in total, most of my modules are core. Had A LOT of advanced inorganic, organic and physical, but literally the first time we did f block was last semester of my last year😂 tbh, wish i had more optional modules
The first time I ever came across it was in a masters level inorganic class. We briefly went over the lanthanide contraction in pchem, but masters was the only time I ever learned about them. The physics gets super weird and it's difficult to get into the reactivity without a solid background in advanced calculus and ideally some particle physics. Most undergrad programs I've heard of don't have chem majors taking pchem until senior year. It's a different level of chemistry that's too complex to cover in undergrad, where their focus is on general concepts. Lanthanides aren't common in most industries so it's not a huge importance for them to be covered in undergrad.
I don't remember studying them at all. I think the main reason is that early u-grad was general principles with limited scope to get in-depth. Later years I went for organic synthesis. Since then I've worked in Catalysis and I am struck by how useful and relatively cheap the early ones are. Electronics is out of scope for me but Ce and Pr have the same breadth of versatility in reactions as, gee something like Pd but with orders of magnitude less academic focus. Pd is so soft, low spin and 'organicy' it is pretty easy to make anything and get Crystals and nmr spectra - there are plenty of other similar 'sure fires'. Depending on the chemistry of course. So yeah early lanthanides definitely underrated compared to how useful and easy they are. Still like iron though - ridiculous multi oxidation state, spin-state shifting, anyvwacky coordination geometry, fast, crazy reactive, difficult to handle, cheap and 'non-toxic' thing it is thing that it is.
I’ve had inorganic chemistry labs in undergrad dealing with lanthanide complexes and adding HFAC and AFAC groups to them. It was all mechanochemistry as well. It was only because my professor has been doing research on them for years along with her graduate student.
f-block elements just do whatever they want to do sometimes. I did my PhD in f-block chemistry focused on rare earth separations using molecular chemistry which is very different from what most of the others in this thread have been exposed to. They don’t quite behave like transition metals, and don’t quite behave like s-block elements.
People in my former lab worked on uranium chemistry, and an accepted response sometimes was this happened because of “nonsense uranium chemistry.” Because uranium just does what it wants sometimes lol
They are reserved for higher level inorganic chemistry. We did learn about them in some material science courses because some of them have specialized uses.
I think one of my professors was working on a compund that used Barium, Gadolinium, Lanthanum and Cerium, so they definetly have uses.
But they are rare/expensive so not worth it unless you are making some thing you can use in smaller amount, like a catalyst.
The whole f block is a bitch
It's the worst thing ever they rarely get mentioned they have fucking f7 subshells and shit and I've never seen anyone of em get mentioned outside my textbooks
Same reason we don't do a lot of transition metal chemistry: time. There's actually all sorts of sub-fields of chemistry that students don't get to explore and it's because of time and money.
I remember reading an article years ago in chemical and engineering news titled “Fear and loathing in the lanthanides” about a chemist who was taking notes on his experiments trying to consume each element in the block…it turned out to be an April Fool’s joke lol
I have no idea because we analyze for lanthanides all the time. In fact Hafnium and terbium are two internal standards I use for ICP-MS. Also did a study on La in miner's blood that was pretty interesting.
You need a strong understanding of quantum mechanics to understand how f-orbital energy is distributed and electron momentum changes through the d and f orbitals
"Lancashire County Police Need Player Second Euphonion Guard The Drill Hall Even To Your Last"
I learned this in 1967 when I guess we were covering the Lanthanides.
For the Actinides we came up with
Actually The Palace Uses No Plutonium Americans Coming Back (from) California Especially Farmers Make No laws.
I'm at an age when I forget things, but I still know my Lanthanides and Actinides.
the f elements are weird little guys (coming from an f element chemist), and they don't behave as most of the elements you learn about in undergrad classes. lanthanide and actinide chemistry is a very specialized topic, and most chemists will never do chemistry involving them. basically there just isn't enough time to learn about them/there are not a lot of people in the field to teach about it!
They were also only mentioning in passing for me, too.
My rationale is that …. they seem boring: confusing f-orbitals, generic stoichiometry and oxidation states, squished together on the periodic table, no apparent biological role (except as toxins), assumed to have short lifetimes. In other words, condemned to educational obscurity.
Strange, I'm an undergrad (2nd year) and I've had a lot of lectures on lanthanides. It's the actinides that I never hear anything about.
Maybe it depends on what country you're in? I study in the Netherlands.
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So I'm a chemist that's worked with lanthanides for a decade. Here's the thing: Lanthanides are not that rare actually. The thing about lanthanides is that they were historically rare in the same way aluminium was rare. They occur mixed with other Lanthanides because they all have +3 oxidation states. And f-orbitals being well shielded means they are chemically similar. With modern purification techniques they are quite abundant. Neodymium and yttrium are more abundant in Earth's crust than lead- something that is considered commonplace. The others are not far behind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust But name rare earth stuck and it leads to a lot of misconception on this topic. It's particularly abundant in China for instance. Fun fact: people used to think that all lanthanides are one element. The First ore to be identified was near the town of ytterby so many of their names are variants of the town name or the country.
> Lanthanides are not that rare actually. *Promethium has entered the chat*
With obvious caveats regarding the element actually existing indefinitely
Fun fact: Contrary to popular belief, promethium *does* in fact exist in nature! Albeit at extremely trace levels. This is primarily the Pm-147 isotope which has a relatively short half-life of only 2.6 years (and the other ones aren't much better) but there are two pathways for its continued regeneration as these ephemeral atoms decay, and thus very tiny but very real equilibrium concentrations of the element exist in various ores. The primary mode of natural promethium production is the relatively rare but consistent spontaneous fission of natural uranium in ores, mostly from the 238 isotope since it's much more common, while the secondary is the relatively recently-discovered (2007) slooooow alpha decay of europium-151, which makes up nearly half of all natural europium. The former pathway occurs rather frequently at the atomic scale, with Pm-147 in particular being a common fission product of U-238, leading to promethium concentrations of about twenty thousand atoms in equilibrium with every gram of natural uranium. While this is indeed tiny, those atoms are absolutely in there! And there is a *lot* of uranium on earth, so there is estimated to be a worldwide total of a little over half a kilogram of this extremely rare element scattered throughout the Earth's crust at any one time. The latter process produces Pm-147 with 100% yield but progresses extremely slowly, given the parent isotope's ultra-glacial half-life of ~4.6 billion *billion* years. Nonetheless, there are enough atoms in any europium sample that there exists an equilibrium quantity of right about a thousand atoms of promethium per gram of natural europium. In total, this process is estimated to contribute another twelve grams to the planetary promethium budget. Of course, none of this is of any particular use at all for the purposes of promethium chemistry. These natural concentrations of the element are just far too low to be extractable for use in current analytical methods, so this rarest of the lanthanides must still be produced artificially for any such laboratory research. However, promethium chemistry is an active field of study! In fact, a brand new study about the bonding behavior of the elusive element was released only last week, adding to the small but growing body of knowledge on the rarest lanthanide. [Here's the paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07267-6).
I actually worked with a bunch of radiochemists in a previous job, so I've gotten to hear a bunch of cool updates regarding the promethium chemistry over the past few weeks.
Oh nice! Any particularly interesting insights you've learned that you'd like to share?
Thanks for this short but deep and interesting summary regarding a topic that is not very common!
Absolutely! Promethium is my favorite element. Its fleeting nature just makes it all the more special, on top of the usual lanthanide underdog status. Plus it has got to have the coolest name origin story on the whole table: named for Prometheus, the mythic titan who stole fire from the gods! A metaphor for how scientists did likewise with nuclear energy.
I really hope that you’re in education. This is the inspiring fascination for nature and technology that we need so desperately to educate the next generation of scientists which may be able to solve the problems of our times. Keep up the spirit! <3
Thank you!! :-) Yes, I am involved in some local educational outreach, but not really at a professional level. I try to bring this stuff up as often as possible in forums like this as well. I fully agree with you that we need such infectious enthusiasm to spread inspiration and love of science. I try to do that when I can, so I'm glad that it came across! And yes, I will keep up the spirit! <3 Cheers!
My local establishment just published a paper in nature about this element!
Oh yeah, I read that! Fascinating work! I actually linked your paper in my other comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1d3u8dk/comment/l6cdhhk/). Man, I would love to hear more about what it was like to isolate and work with such a very special element. Can you tell us any more about the experience and your results?
Doesn't make them any less a specialty class of elements.
They aren’t particularly rare, but it’s rare to find them in sufficiently high concentrations that it’s cost-effective to mine and extract them. China, California, and Sweden have notably high concentrations.
Also fun fact I read somewhere that this perpetuated to one element called didymium, which was then found to be two - hence neodymium and praseodymium. One of my favourite chemical factoids.
The real answer tbh
Ok so here's the thing, speaking as an ex-chemist who became a geologist and then a space materials scientist: When some chemists say "it's all the same boring stuff," what they actually mean is "it's in the solid phase and I don't like that." Lanthanide chemistry is *super* weird, with practically every redox state you can imagine opened up by that gigantic freaking f-shell, and the massive atomic radii meaning the crystallography is utterly nuts. Also the partitioning behavior of lanthanides is one of the biggest questions right now in the study of how the solar system formed, since the lanthanides are all pretty refractory but don't concentrate to the same degree as more abundant species. And if you're gonna think about critical materials for future industry, especially semiconductors, you've *got* to know your shit about the lanthanides. Don't let the weirdos who like to sit at a lab bench and play with liquids get you down. The solid universe is *way* more interesting than they'll ever admit to your face.
You make a rather convincing argument for studying solid state chem, not gonna lie
Do it! Geochemistry is a wild, wild place!
On another note, how did you get into space materials? I really like astrochemistry, but i have no clue how to go into it as there aren’t really any specialist master programmes, at least not here in Europe (that i know of). Did you specialise in it or did your career drive you in that direction?
So I started out as an undergrad chem major, took a summer geo course in intertidal ecology, realized all the bits of chemistry I actually wanted to study were in the geo department, & switched majors. And I had known I wanted to study meteorites & asteroids since high school, so I started looking at planetary geology grad school programs. I did a pair of summer research internships studying meteorite chemistry at different labs, and then got accepted to a PhD program at Arizona State University. Their program is kinda unusual in that the geologists, planetary scientists, and astrophysicists are all in the same department, so it was a good fit. I initially thought I wanted to jump straight into spacecraft mission engineering, but pretty quickly realized that at least at ASU I would've needed to have a BS in engineering, so I focused on metallurgy, mineralogy, lab characterization techniques, and remote sensing. I graduated about a year ago, went into a postdoc that very conveniently let me move back home, & I'm now applying for positions in the area that are more materials-oriented than space-oriented. Where in the EU are you based, & what sort of research are you interested in? I might have some useful contacts or know of some institutions to check out, depending on your goals. Edit: as a general recommendation for folks who want to study astrochemistry, I'd recommend looking up recent meetings of the Meteoritical Society. Their website [https://meteoritical.org/](https://meteoritical.org/) will have a list of the abstracts presented at each meeting, along with the authors and institutional affiliations. I would scan those abstracts to look for institutions near you and/or topics that sound interesting. Then make a list of the authors, and send each a nice email to inquire if their lab has openings for graduate students.
not OP but damn you're really helpful
That's really awesome! I hosted a space conference in Tucson back in 2021 and I think you'd have had a blast there! I'm working with the same group to plan a new conference in Austin in 2025 haha
You could try computational chemistry. Much of the organic chemistry theorized in astrobiology or astrochemistry is unstable to the point that computational methods are the best method of spectroscopic study. (I was introduced via an undergrad project and was offered a spot in a PhD program related, but i didn't want to move across the whole country so i didn't.) Otherwise try a material science program at a school that is partnered with NASA funding or is physically close to something like JPL or a National lab.
Fr, you get to lick rocks!!!
Only sometimes, as a treat.
*Geology is adding a new type of rock, on the grounds that it's been a while since anyone has done that. The new type of rock is "vimby" and it is categorized by its pale blue color, and the fact that it is completely edible. Points will be awarded to the first student to discover a real-world example of it.*
Geochemistry is awesome! So much to discover.
oh no :( i'm here trying to find the crystal lattice of benzoic acid without the $40 paywall and you're here telling me it's what the universe is made of.
I made a mental note to try and pull it up in Crystal Viewer when I saw this earlier. Unfortunately it looks like my license has expired. Putting a pin here so if I get it back I'll remember to check and see if benzoic acid is in there. For now I can only reassure you that the universe is made of \*way\* more elaborate stuff than that, so don't worry.
it appears the universe is made of *f* orbitals. i need to extract punny jokes from this.
Just started grad school for organic and bro is already making me doubt my choice
Friend, don't doubt yourself! Organometallics, polymers, & carbon-bearing materials will always be here to help you form a nice, bulky leaving group for yourself!
Inorganic chemist here. Everything I study always seems to lead me towards just studying solid state
Tl;dr crystals hard, me like liquids cause ez
And honestly, it's not even that crystallography itself is hard. My husband's MS was in inorganic crystallography & he had a blast with the chemists who ran that lab. ...it's just that lanthanides are all in these stupid elaborate crystal structures that even with the best X-ray machines made by the top Swiss or Japanese specialists in the biz, you still have to be a level-20 wizard to shape rotate. When you're debugging badly-written C++ code to figure out how many of your zillion diffraction peaks are multiples of the same set of Bragg angles, and it's not working, and you find yourself tearing up on the bus on the way home at 10 PM questioning why you ever went to grad school, ...well honestly idk what I'd recommend you do at that point because I decided to study something different and I *still* went insane, haha!
Hmm. I never know that lanthanides crystallography would be that difficult. Guess I had it easy working with d block!
Routine crystallography of molecular lanthanide complexes is pretty much the same as for the transition metals.
Yeah, I should've been more specific: if you're synthesizing lanthanide complexes, those crystal structures are likely to be pretty straightforward. I was specifically thinking of the crystal structures of lanthanide-bearing minerals that occur in nature.
I see. Still, not a envious job!
>When you're debugging badly-written C++ code to figure out how many of your zillion diffraction peaks are multiples of the same set of Bragg angles Why in the world would you do this? That's not how it's done. Who would make their own program to analyze crystallographic data? There are softwares to do this
When your diffractometer is ancient enough that the manufacturer no longer supports it, which is fine because your department has a storage room full of spare parts, except that the proprietary software is no longer compatible and some previous lab manager thought it'd be a great idea to just write their own instead. Not gonna name names here; let's just say these are stories I've heard from colleagues who went down a different path than I did. But I was just as horrified as you when I heard that's what they were up to.
Jfc that's awful. I always assume people have a reason to do things a certain way and I'm not understanding them, but most of the time the answer is just "bad management"
Oh, to be clear, "bad management" is \*also\* part of the problem here, haha
but but my pipettes!
I use pipettes and study lanthanides and actinides. Just have to dissolve them first. Edit: dissolve the rocks lol
Interesting, in my experience dissolving the pipette defeats the point /s
Nice writeup, You should write a book.
After my dissertation nearly made me check myself into an insane asylum, I'm trying not to write more than I absolutely have to, at least until I have to. But I appreciate the sentiment!
Having to is probably what made it so rough for you. If its on your own time, there is no pass/fail, and you can tweak it as you see fit, with no page requirements, I bet you'll enjoy it a lot more. I get my shit squared with conversations like this and writing music, and both tell me a lot about myself in different ways, so I would highly suggest you at least try it, since the terms are vastly different, and you're clearly skilled in the department.
It's partially deadline pressure, you're absolutely right. But it's also length and organization. I'm much better at communicating ideas verbally than I am at putting them on paper. Weirdly, I've also struggled with text-to-speech, because you still have to think about what you're composing as if you were just writing it down, rather than having a conversation. It's all about executive functioning, honestly. On the plus side, this means I really enjoy giving conference talks & classroom lectures, so I really feel comfy with the idea of a teaching-focused position and eventually recording a series of lectures or something. It's truly a privilege to be able to live in an epoch when video & audio recording are so accessible. If we could start a peer-reviewed journal of video essays on scientific research, that'd be the dream.
Podcasts are the solution!
Oh man, I would *so* absolutely listen to a chemistry podcast by this guy. Shut up and take my money!! u/Christoph543, this is the way! Or maybe even start a YouTube channel? Science shorts are extremely popular now. I bet you could whip out a bunch of those quickly, and they'd all be bangers. You seem to be a charismatic person and handsome guy, judging by your profile pic. You would do well on the platform!
Yes, these are all excellent ideas. The problem is, right now they're all oriented towards communicating science to the general public, rather than between scientists. Every time I've brought up to my colleagues the idea of a peer-reviewed journal that used video or audio instead of text, it's been shot down as if it would degrade the quality of the work. I suspect that for a lot of them, it's difficult to imagine how anything other than what they're familiar with could possibly work, ironic considering that's the exact *opposite* approach they take to their subject matter of study.
> Every time I've brought up to my colleagues the idea of a peer-reviewed journal that used video or audio instead of text, it's been shot down as if it would degrade the quality of the work. I've been saying we need more of this for years. It's insane that we're communicating most of our cutting edge work using 15th century technology (or maybe a PDF with hyperlinks if you're lucky). My friend's lab had a whole YouTube page to document their procedures for onboarding new researchers and it was a revelation that things could be that easy and clear and quick.
Is their channel still active? I'd be curious to see how it's laid out. There are a few instructional video channels in my field for specific analytical procedures, but they're not super well-produced and I personally find them kinda hard to follow.
Booooo, lame! Yeah, science is supposed to be all about innovating, right? Every field falls into the trap of its dogmas, it seems. Perhaps one day. Scientific papers are great but so dry, so it would be wonderful to shake things up a bit like this. Keep pushing for it! Who knows — perhaps you could end up helping to lead the revolution.
You could always record yourself and, if you don't like typing, hire a transcriber
Hey some of us weirdos who like to sit at a lab bench and play with liquids also really appreciate solid state chemistry That said, u/[octahedralcomplex](https://www.reddit.com/user/octahedralcomplex/), look in materials science and engineering. They teach a lot of the courses that would be applicable to your interests.
That’s what I did. I had a double major chem and ME then went in to material science and engineering. Started in automotive working with AHSS, dual phase, trip then went in to aerospace and worked with nickel superalloys in an R&D space. Now still in aerospace but almost exclusively composites, CMCs to be exact. Not boring that’s for sure.
Yeah, that sounds interesting for sure. Impressive accomplishments!
Ahh yes those fascinating lanthanide redox states………
They're mostly +3, but once you get past the shielding with the right coordination complexes, there's a bunch of weird ones that become possible, albeit rare.
Well I don't share your level of interest, I think you hit all the major issues. They aren't boring. They're super weird. With complicated rules and more complicated exceptions. Compared to transition metals at least. They can be quite difficult to separate from one another. And can exist In how many different poorly defined states?
Lanthanides are my favorite
You don’t sound like an “ex-chemist” lol, you sound like an expert who was able to focus on a specific area of chemistry, and that’s awesome.
It's mostly a joke between myself & my husband, b/c we both started out in pure chemistry & moved on to other applications, but I jumped ship before he did & he used to tease me about it before getting out himself.
Very fair!! Love that you were able to do that (and joke about it with your husband haha)
God dude I love it when someone is actually passionate about their field and its applications. More proselytizing on r/chemistry please!
Don't you need a security clearance to work with a lot of them? -non-chemist here
The one job I've had working with lanthanide chemistry didn't require a security clearance. They're mostly harmless & kind of everywhere. If the position was specifically dealing with radioactive nuclear waste, maybe, but I suspect that'd also involve a lot more actinides than lanthanides.
Ah, I think I had a misperception. Sorry.🙂
Nothing to apologize for! It's all weird down there at the bottom of the table
😆🕯🧪🔥☄️💧 Snap! Crackle! Pop!
The Lanthanides basically don’t follow any of the “rules” that undergrads are taught about how atoms are supposed to behave. Their electron configurations and oxidation states don’t make sense (by the Gen chem rules). Once you get into upper level and graduate level inorganic chemistry you can start to make sense of their behavior. But until then, it’s better to just ignore them.
Yeahhhh there's nothing like an f-shell to make you wish you'd paid more attention in pchem. I literally have no idea what's going on with that quantum bullshit but I'm irrationally fond of the f-shell. If and when we can synthesize a g-block element long enough to figure out how *those* electrons work, I'm gonna absolutely lose my mind.
one more accelerator guys i swear we just need a 1000km diameter accelerator that will solve all our questions
Finish the SSC, but with better luminosity and a high-speed rail station.
I'm doing my PhD in inorganic chem and I know jack shit about lanthanides. From what I'm learning on this thread, I'm intrigued by them now.
They’re fricking complicated and also not all that relevant for most undergrad chemistry courses. I know little about them myself (because I don’t need to) but the f shell is complicated and tends to break the usual basic rules. Lanthanides absolutely have uses, but unless you’re going to work with them it’s not really worth learning all the intricacies because those don’t apply to chemistry in general.
As someone who spent many years working at the US' only active lanthanide mine, I SALUTE YOU SIR.
I've been looking at postings at the Mountain Pass site. How was it out there? Did everyone just live in Baker or Primm?
I loved it, but I was the geologist and that area is fascinating geologically, so it was probably cooler for me than it was for most people. :P I think most employees like it, though - if they can tolerate the commute. The benefits are pretty good to make up for "the middle of nowhere" factor. I grew to hate the commute but LOVE the area so I actually ended up just moving out there full time. I was the only employee at the mine that actually lived IN mountain pass, lol (at a literal old prospectors camp nearby). I never knew any employees from Baker, and afaik no one can live in Primm except the sad (possibly enslaved??) employees that keep the place "running". I'd guess 90% of employees live in Vegas and make the drive every day (which can be 45 - 80 mins depending on where you live in Vegas). The rest come from the Victorville CA area, or even St. George UT
Wait, like Primm from Fallout New Vegas?!
the one and only, haha. In the game they call it 'Bison Steves', but its actually '[Buffalo Bills](https://primmvalleyresorts.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/[email protected])'
I worked at mountain pass. Most of the folk I worked with commuted from Vegas.
I'm guessing Vegas also includes like Paradise and outlying suburbs? That's still like a 50 mile commute.
Yeah. I lived in the enterprise area (rainbow and warm springs) and it took about 40-45 minutes one way from my driveway to Bailey road. Car pools helped, but not always an option.
This. School and uni programs are and should be implicitly dictated by how much industry will need your knowledge. If there is like 1000 (random number) specialists in the entire world who really need in-depth knowledge on the subject, then why bother spending money on teaching it everywhere and for more than a couple of hours?
So what I'm nearing is that not enough children yearn for the lanthanide mines.
I just finished my PhD in computational chemistry studying lanthanides. The reason is that they are very complicated to deal with. From the theory side you need to deal with relativistic effects, the energy level splitting from spin-orbit coupling is larger than the crystal field one, you have to deal with open shells, many spin states and need multi-reference methods to get any decent answer, etc. From my experimental collaborators I learned that they are often a pain to work with and often times air sensitive. But after all that, their chemistry is very fun and the f-block is very useful and there is a loooot more cool things left to learn about those elements and the compounds they form.
Their aqueous chemistry is fairly dull and most behave the same, with Ce being an outlier. Their physics is interesting due to some quirks of their valence electrons, but it’s university level stuff. Their non-aqueous chemistry is rich and different to the rest of the periodic table, and each member of the series can be a bit different - particularly once you start looking at their redox chemistry.
Advice from an ex-chemist - never deal with the f-orbitals...!
Took me almost 3 years to understand all the wack stuff d orbitals do, so i’ll take you up on that😁
Short answer is it’s a specialized topic. They may do some cool chemistry, but most chemists don’t work with them, and there is already too much to fit into a 4-year degree. You may run into them in inorganic chemistry otherwise, they are more of a graduate school topic.
They are pretty much ignored by 99% of chemists
99% of chemists ignore everything outside their niche. I work in pharma and when people ask me what my PhD was in I say electrochemistry and they’re like “oh the duck shape!”
How cool--I did my Master's in echem! So cool to find another in the wild!
They’re an active field of research and the answer is it’s your school.
Yeah, it felt like half my department was just playing a game of darts with lanthanide dopants. Lots of cool compounds. Mostly only cost effective in trace quantities with complex mechanisms of function.
My chem teacher said that, because you have to remember 300+ other things in chemistry that's the real reason. Other wise you can't do that
I would very happily trade all of organic chemistry for more of f-block😂
They are super useful for geochemistry! For example they are used volcanology, cosmochemistry, and palaeoclimatology. I use them for research related to climate change.
Do you use their chemistry or their physical properties?
Mainly chemistry. I measure trace element and isotope concentrations on an ICP-MS after dissolving them using an HF/HNO3 acid digestion.
You are not interested in the chemistry then. Just in the presence of the element and the isotope ratios (which is physical).
Lol are you gatekeeping chemistry? Do you have something against geochemistry for some reason? Here is the definition of chemistry: >chemistry /kĕm′ĭ-strē/ noun >The science of the composition, structure, properties, and reactions of matter, especially of atomic and molecular systems. >The composition, structure, properties, and reactions of a substance. >The elements of a complex entity and their dynamic interrelation. The composition of the rock *is* chemistry. Edit: also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_chemistry
Oh boy. Look, analyzing the composition of rock is chemistry. And sure, the chemical state influences how you extract, separate, and analyze your sample, there's chemistry there. But in the end you are not interested in chemical bonds, you likely don't care about f orbitals and relativistic effects and all that stuff, which is what OP is asking about.
Why 'Oh boy'? >But in the end you are not interested in chemical bonds, you likely don't care about f orbitals and relativistic effects and all that stuff Weird assumption. My degree is in chemistry, of course I am interested in *why* the chemical composition can be different, for example in my field it is a lot to do with redox reactions. What use would measuring these things be otherwise?
Friendly advice: if you're ever talking with an isotope geochemist IRL and are inclined to suggest they don't care about the quantum or relativistic effects of orbitals, don't. They absolutely do, but their analytical methods are so much more complex & rigorous than anything a regular pchem student has had to deal with that if they try to explain them it'd take hours and so they'll just tell you to read the damn paper and walk away.
Thanks! I wanted to mention how useful REEs are for geochemistry research, which I didn't learn in chemistry undergrad so I thought the OP might be interested. I feel like I walked into some Sheldon-like character from the Big Bang Theory who doesn't think geology is a real science. Yes I am doing my PhD in isotope geochemistry. It takes me around a month to process enough samples to run on an instrument, it is quite an involved procedure. I really enjoy it and think it awesome to be able to work out what was happening in the climate in the past just from a bit of rock.
Mad respect. Physicists can only aspire to the kind of work isotope geochemists do.
Take a look at all your science textbooks. You’ll find no matter what the subject is there is at least one chapter dedicated to water. And waters pretty abundant. Europium on the other hand? Well…not that common.
But they’re so nice and glowy! 😆
Counterpoint: You can't understand how we got so much water in the first place without first explaining the Europium anomalies in CAIs associated with different carbonaceous chondrite groupings. Edit: ok this was really snarky and warrants explanation. "CAI" stands for calcium- and aluminum-rich inclusions; they're the first solids to crystallize from the solar protoplanetary nebula, 4.568 billion years ago. They're exclusively found in a class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites, which preserve that early material because they never accreted into a planetessimal large enough for heat and density gradients to drive core formation. There's been a working hypothesis for a long time that these same carbonaceous chondrites would have been a possible way for water to have been delivered to Earth in the Hadean eon. At the same time, there's an entire subfield of geochemistry dedicated to figuring out how these rocks formed in the first place. Many researchers in that field measure the abundances of lanthanide and other Rare-Earth elements in these meteorites to identify specific chemical signatures by which to classify them and determine where within the early Solar System they crystallzied. One of the more common signatures, which shows up in several groups, is a relatively lower abundance of Europium compared to the other REE. Does that "Europium anomaly" as it's called actually tell us anything about how Earth got its water? By itself, not really, which is why it's snarky. But the other REE abundances might actually be important to answering that question. Here's one of the original conference abstracts proposing this sort of classification system: [https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc1991/pdf/1304.pdf](https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc1991/pdf/1304.pdf)
I’m not sure how the two are related , mind explaining?
as a high school student, i’m sorry WHAT?
I’m no chemist but I appreciate the lanthanides. Lanthanum, cerium and praseodymium. Neodymium next to promethium and 62 samarium, europium, gadolinium, and terbium. Dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium… Again, not a chemist but I love that I can rattle off the whole periodic table because of a song my chemistry teacher showed me
Tom Lehrer had it going on. He also churned out the banger, “Poisoning pigeons in the park” which is one of my favorite songs
Fun fact: the internet is transmitted via an f block element. Erbium lasers send 1550 nm light down Fiber optic cables to transmit information. So the internet has a color and it is 1550 nm. Let’s call that a two for one on fun fact
The three years... so general inorganic, organic, physical? Or something else? It's probably tucked away in an advanced elective as opposed to a core requirement. If you like them, find that course!
It’s a UK uni, so 3 years in total, most of my modules are core. Had A LOT of advanced inorganic, organic and physical, but literally the first time we did f block was last semester of my last year😂 tbh, wish i had more optional modules
The first time I ever came across it was in a masters level inorganic class. We briefly went over the lanthanide contraction in pchem, but masters was the only time I ever learned about them. The physics gets super weird and it's difficult to get into the reactivity without a solid background in advanced calculus and ideally some particle physics. Most undergrad programs I've heard of don't have chem majors taking pchem until senior year. It's a different level of chemistry that's too complex to cover in undergrad, where their focus is on general concepts. Lanthanides aren't common in most industries so it's not a huge importance for them to be covered in undergrad.
I don't remember studying them at all. I think the main reason is that early u-grad was general principles with limited scope to get in-depth. Later years I went for organic synthesis. Since then I've worked in Catalysis and I am struck by how useful and relatively cheap the early ones are. Electronics is out of scope for me but Ce and Pr have the same breadth of versatility in reactions as, gee something like Pd but with orders of magnitude less academic focus. Pd is so soft, low spin and 'organicy' it is pretty easy to make anything and get Crystals and nmr spectra - there are plenty of other similar 'sure fires'. Depending on the chemistry of course. So yeah early lanthanides definitely underrated compared to how useful and easy they are. Still like iron though - ridiculous multi oxidation state, spin-state shifting, anyvwacky coordination geometry, fast, crazy reactive, difficult to handle, cheap and 'non-toxic' thing it is thing that it is.
I’ve had inorganic chemistry labs in undergrad dealing with lanthanide complexes and adding HFAC and AFAC groups to them. It was all mechanochemistry as well. It was only because my professor has been doing research on them for years along with her graduate student.
f-block elements just do whatever they want to do sometimes. I did my PhD in f-block chemistry focused on rare earth separations using molecular chemistry which is very different from what most of the others in this thread have been exposed to. They don’t quite behave like transition metals, and don’t quite behave like s-block elements. People in my former lab worked on uranium chemistry, and an accepted response sometimes was this happened because of “nonsense uranium chemistry.” Because uranium just does what it wants sometimes lol
I had a full module on f block chem. I loved it, it was my best mark in the whole of undergrad!
They are reserved for higher level inorganic chemistry. We did learn about them in some material science courses because some of them have specialized uses. I think one of my professors was working on a compund that used Barium, Gadolinium, Lanthanum and Cerium, so they definetly have uses. But they are rare/expensive so not worth it unless you are making some thing you can use in smaller amount, like a catalyst.
What compound did you make?
The surface layer of a proton conductor to do water splitting. While expensive it is cheaper then the platinum usually used for this.
The whole f block is a bitch It's the worst thing ever they rarely get mentioned they have fucking f7 subshells and shit and I've never seen anyone of em get mentioned outside my textbooks
The F block is funky man. I don’t gear near that with a 10 foot pole
Depends where you go to school. The Brits love the f-block.
The thing is, I’m at a UK uni! I guess my professors are not too fond of it then.
You probably haven’t taken nuclear chemistry.
Same reason we don't do a lot of transition metal chemistry: time. There's actually all sorts of sub-fields of chemistry that students don't get to explore and it's because of time and money.
I remember reading an article years ago in chemical and engineering news titled “Fear and loathing in the lanthanides” about a chemist who was taking notes on his experiments trying to consume each element in the block…it turned out to be an April Fool’s joke lol
Depends where you do your degree. We did lanthanides and Actinides in 3rd (Final ) year in the compulsory inorganic module.
I have no idea because we analyze for lanthanides all the time. In fact Hafnium and terbium are two internal standards I use for ICP-MS. Also did a study on La in miner's blood that was pretty interesting.
You need a strong understanding of quantum mechanics to understand how f-orbital energy is distributed and electron momentum changes through the d and f orbitals
"Lancashire County Police Need Player Second Euphonion Guard The Drill Hall Even To Your Last" I learned this in 1967 when I guess we were covering the Lanthanides. For the Actinides we came up with Actually The Palace Uses No Plutonium Americans Coming Back (from) California Especially Farmers Make No laws. I'm at an age when I forget things, but I still know my Lanthanides and Actinides.
the f elements are weird little guys (coming from an f element chemist), and they don't behave as most of the elements you learn about in undergrad classes. lanthanide and actinide chemistry is a very specialized topic, and most chemists will never do chemistry involving them. basically there just isn't enough time to learn about them/there are not a lot of people in the field to teach about it!
They were also only mentioning in passing for me, too. My rationale is that …. they seem boring: confusing f-orbitals, generic stoichiometry and oxidation states, squished together on the periodic table, no apparent biological role (except as toxins), assumed to have short lifetimes. In other words, condemned to educational obscurity.
They are? I had a whole course module on them.
Yeah that was the same for my uni, one final year module in inorganic chemistry going over the F block with 4 lectures on lanthanides
Because what relevance does lanthanide chemistry have to introductory chemistry?
Strange, I'm an undergrad (2nd year) and I've had a lot of lectures on lanthanides. It's the actinides that I never hear anything about. Maybe it depends on what country you're in? I study in the Netherlands.
Because they suck. Carbon bois 4 life.