Yttrium · element 39
Dug from a Swedish quarry, it puts the yellow in white LEDs, the red in old televisions and the power in surgical lasers
Key facts
A single quarry on a small island near Stockholm gave the world four elements, and yttrium was the first. The village of Ytterby lent its name to yttrium, ytterbium, terbium and erbium, all separated over decades from one black, heavy mineral. Yttrium is a silvery transition metal that is chemically almost indistinguishable from the rare earth elements, and it is always found mixed in with them.
Its uses are hidden in plain sight. Almost every white LED contains a yttrium compound that converts blue light into yellow so the mix looks white. The red phosphor that made colour television vivid was based on yttrium. The ceramic that coats jet turbine blades, the crown a dentist fits and the laser that removes tattoos all depend on it.
Where it is found
Yttrium is not rare, at roughly 30 parts per million in the crust it is more abundant than lead, but it never occurs as a pure mineral. It behaves like the heavier lanthanides and concentrates in the same minerals: xenotime, monazite and especially the ion-adsorption clays of southern China, which are the main source of heavy rare earths today. China produces the great majority of the world's yttrium.
It also turns up in uranium ores and in gadolinite from the original Swedish quarry, and Apollo lunar rocks contain unusually high yttrium.
How it was discovered
In 1787 Carl Axel Arrhenius, an army lieutenant and amateur mineralogist, picked up an unusually heavy black stone from the feldspar quarry at Ytterby. He sent samples to chemists, and in 1794 the Finnish chemist Johan Gadolin, working in Åbo, found that about 38 per cent of it was an unknown oxide. Anders Ekeberg confirmed the result in 1797 and named the oxide yttria and the mineral gadolinite.
The metal was first prepared in 1828 by Friedrich Wöhler, who heated yttrium chloride with potassium. Yttria turned out to be far from pure. Over the following century chemists teased terbium, erbium, ytterbium and several other rare earths out of it, one of the longest detective stories in chemistry.
What we use it for
Phosphors are the largest use. Yttrium aluminium garnet doped with cerium is the yellow phosphor coated over the blue chip inside white LEDs, so it is in nearly every LED bulb, phone torch and car headlamp. Europium-doped yttrium oxide and oxysulfide were the red phosphors of colour cathode ray tubes from the 1960s onwards, and they still appear in some fluorescent lamps.
Neodymium-doped YAG lasers cut and weld metal, remove tattoos, treat eye conditions and measure distances. Yttrium oxide stabilises zirconia ceramic, stopping it cracking as it heats and cools, and this yttria-stabilised zirconia forms dental crowns, oxygen sensors in car exhausts, fuel cell electrolytes and the heat-shielding coatings on turbine blades. The yttrium barium copper oxide superconductor discovered in 1987 was the first to work above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. In medicine, yttrium-90 is bound to tiny glass beads or antibodies to irradiate liver tumours and lymphomas from the inside.
Reading the numbers
Yttrium melts at about 1526 °C, almost the same as iron, and boils at 2930 °C. Its density of 4.47 grams per cubic centimetre is low for a transition metal, close to titanium and well under iron, which is why yttrium is added to lightweight aluminium and magnesium alloys.
The configuration [Kr] 4d1 5s2 provides three outer electrons, and yttrium gives up all three to form Y3+ in in effect every compound. The first three ionisation energies, 600, 1180 and 1980 kJ/mol, climb gently, then the fourth jumps to 5847 kJ/mol as the krypton core is reached. Its electronegativity of 1.22 is low, marking a reactive metal that tarnishes in air. Yttrium sits at the top of group 3 in period 5, and its Y3+ ion is about the same size as those of holmium and dysprosium, which is why it travels with the heavy rare earths in nature and behaves like one of them.
Safety and the environment
Yttrium metal in bulk is not hazardous, but fine powder and turnings can ignite. Soluble yttrium compounds are mildly toxic, and long-term inhalation of yttrium dust may harm the lungs, so industrial exposure is limited. Yttrium-90 is a strong beta emitter with a half-life of about 64 hours, and it is handled under radiation controls.
The environmental cost lies in rare earth mining. Extracting heavy rare earths from clays involves leaching with chemicals that have polluted soil and water in parts of southern China. Recycling is growing but still small, and finished products such as YAG and stabilised zirconia are inert in use.
Did you know?
- The quarry at Ytterby, Sweden, is the source of four element names: yttrium, ytterbium, terbium and erbium.
- Nearly every white LED contains yttrium in the yellow phosphor that turns blue light into white.
- Yttrium barium copper oxide, discovered in 1987, was the first superconductor to work above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen.
- Rocks brought back from the Moon by the Apollo missions are richer in yttrium than typical rocks on Earth.
- Yttria-stabilised zirconia protects jet engine blades from heat and is also shaped into tooth-coloured dental crowns.
- Tiny glass microspheres containing radioactive yttrium-90 are injected into liver tumours to destroy them from within.
More in the transition metals
Column-mates come first, since elements in one column have outer electrons arranged in a similar way and tend to behave alike; the rest are the nearest neighbours in the family.
See all 38 transition metals on one page, or browse all 118 elements.
Frequently asked questions
Is yttrium a rare earth element?
Strictly, the rare earths are the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium, so yes, yttrium is usually counted as one. It is a transition metal in group 3 rather than a lanthanide, but its ion is the same size and charge as the heavy lanthanides and it is always found with them in nature.
What is yttrium used for in everyday life?
Its most common role is in the phosphor inside white LEDs, so it is present in almost every modern light bulb, torch and screen backlight. It also appears in dental crowns made of stabilised zirconia, in the ceramic coatings of jet engines and in the YAG lasers used for cutting metal and medical procedures.
Is yttrium toxic?
Yttrium compounds are considered mildly toxic and prolonged exposure to yttrium dust can affect the lungs, so it is controlled in the workplace. Finished products that contain it, such as LEDs and ceramics, are inert and safe. The radioactive isotope yttrium-90 is hazardous but is used only under medical supervision.
Why is yttrium in LEDs?
Blue LED chips are efficient, but blue light alone is useless for lighting. A coating of yttrium aluminium garnet doped with cerium absorbs part of the blue light and re-emits it as yellow, and the combination of blue and yellow appears white to the eye. The garnet is stable, cheap and glows brightly, so it became the industry standard.
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Written by Anthony. Updated September 2026. Numerical data from Periodic-Table-JSON (CC BY-SA), cross-checked against the Yttrium reference article. Spotted an error? Tell us.