Facts about Gadolinium
Gadolinium gallium garnet (Gd3Ga5O12) is a material with good optical properties.
Gadolinium is used for making gadolinium yttrium garnets, which have microwave applications, and gadolinium compounds are used for making phosphors for color TV tubes.
Due the extremely high neutron cross-section of gadolinium, this element is very effective for use with neutron radiography.
Gadolinium is used in nuclear marine propulsion systems as a burnable poison.
Gadolinium is an inner transition metal (or lanthanide) that lies in period 6 of the periodic table, between europium and terbium.
Gadolinium (chemical symbol Gd, atomic number 64) is a silvery white metallic element and a member of the lanthanide series of chemical elements.
A single crystal of gadolinium oxyorthosilicate (GSO) is used as a scintillator in medical imaging equipment such as positron emission tomography (PET).
Gadolinium demonstrates a magenetocaloric effect whereby its temperature increases when it enters a magnetic field and decreases when it leaves the magnetic field.
Gadolinium has the highest thermal neutron capture cross-section of any (known) element (about 49,000 barns), but it also has a fast burn-out rate, limiting its usefulness as a material for nuclear control rods.
Gadolinium is also used for manufacturing compact discs and computer memory.
The gadolinium slows the initial reaction rate, but as it decays other neutron poisons accumulate, allowing for long-running cores.
In X-ray technology, gadolinium is contained in the phosphor layer suspended in a polymer matrix at the detector.
The effect is considerably stronger for the gadolinium alloy Gd5(Si2Ge2).
In 1880, Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac examined samples of didymium and gadolinite by spectroscopy and observed the unique spectral lines produced by gadolinium.
At room temperature, gadolinium crystallizes to produce its "alpha" form, which has a hexagonal, close-packed structure.
Today, gadolinium is isolated by techniques such as ion exchange and solvent extraction, or by the reduction of its anhydrous fluoride with metallic calcium.
Gadolinium becomes superconductive below a critical temperature of 1.083 K. It is strongly magnetic at room temperature and exhibits ferromagnetic properties below room temperature.
Naturally occurring gadolinium is composed of 5 stable isotopes, 154Gd, 155Gd, 156Gd, 157Gd and 158Gd, and 2 radioisotopes, 152Gd and 160Gd, with 158Gd being the most abundant (24.84 percent natural abundance).
French chemist Paul Йmile Lecoq de Boisbaudran separated gadolinia, the oxide of gadolinium, from Mosander's yttria in 1886.
Both gadolinium and gadolinite were named after the Finnish chemist and geologist Johan Gadolin.
Another new scintillator for detecting neutrons is gadolinium orthosilicate (GSO - Gd2SiO5: Ce).
Terbium-doped gadolinium oxysulfide (Gd2O2S: Tb) at the phosphor layer converts X-rays released from the source into light.
Gadolinium is also used as a secondary, emergency shut-down measure in some nuclear reactors, particularly of the CANDU type.
In X-ray technology, gadolinium is contained in the phosphor layer suspended in a polymer matrix at the detector.