18 Facts About Gadolinium

Gadolinium is a chemical element with the symbol Gd and atomic number 64.

Gadolinium reacts with atmospheric oxygen or moisture slowly to form a black coating.

Gadolinium was discovered in 1880 by Jean Charles de Marignac, who detected its oxide by using spectroscopy.

Gadolinium is a strong reducing agent, which reduces oxides of several metals into their elements.

Gadolinium is quite electropositive and reacts slowly with cold water and quite quickly with hot water to form gadolinium hydroxide:.

Gadolinium metal is attacked readily by dilute sulfuric acid to form solutions containing the colorless Gd ions, which exist as [Gd9] complexes:.

Gadolinium halides are obtained by heating Gd halides in presence of metallic Gd in tantalum containers.

Gadolinium is named after the mineral gadolinite, in turn named after Finnish chemist and geologist Johan Gadolin.

Gadolinium is a constituent in many minerals such as monazite and bastnasite.

Gadolinium has no large-scale applications, but it has a variety of specialized uses.

Gadolinium is used in nuclear marine propulsion systems as a burnable poison.

Gadolinium compounds are used for making green phosphors for color TV tubes.

Gadolinium-153 is produced in a nuclear reactor from elemental europium or enriched gadolinium targets.

Gadolinium is used for making gadolinium yttrium garnet ; it has microwave applications and is used in fabrication of various optical components and as substrate material for magneto-optical films.

Gadolinium can serve as an electrolyte in solid oxide fuel cells .

Gadolinium-based materials, such as Gd54, are currently the most promising materials, owing to their high Curie temperature and giant magnetocaloric effect.

Gadolinium has no known native biological role, but its compounds are used as research tools in biomedicine.

Gadolinium has recently been used to measure the distance between two points in a protein via electron paramagnetic resonance, something that gadolinium is especially amenable to thanks to EPR sensitivity at w-band frequencies.