What is gadolinium and what is its atomic number?
Gadolinium is a chemical element with the symbol Gd and atomic number 64. It is a silvery-white, ductile, malleable rare-earth element and the eighth member of the lanthanide series.
Questions about Gadolinium
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who discovered gadolinium and when?
Gadolinium was discovered in 1880 by the Swiss chemist Jean Charles de Marignac, who detected its oxide using spectroscopy. The pure element was first isolated by the chemist Félix Trombe in 1935.
Why is gadolinium used in MRI scans?
Gadolinium is used in MRI because, as a paramagnetic ion, it increases nuclear spin relaxation rates and enhances images. At body temperature it exhibits the greatest paramagnetic effect of any element, and chelated gadolinium complexes are injected intravenously as contrast agents.
Is gadolinium toxic to humans?
Free gadolinium ions are highly toxic to mammals because they interfere with calcium-ion channel dependent processes. Chelation lowers the toxicity by a factor of 31, making MRI contrast agents safe enough for most people, though patients with kidney failure risk a rare illness called nephrogenic systemic fibrosis.
What is gadolinium named after?
Gadolinium is named after the mineral gadolinite, which was named for the Finnish chemist Johan Gadolin who first chemically analyzed the mineral in 1794. The French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran named the element gadolinium in 1886.
Why is gadolinium used in nuclear reactors?
Gadolinium absorbs neutrons strongly, with the isotope gadolinium-157 having the highest thermal-neutron capture cross-section of any stable nuclide at about 259,000 barns. It is used for reactor shielding, as an emergency shut-down measure in some CANDU reactors, and as a burnable poison in nuclear marine propulsion.
Where is gadolinium found and how much is produced?
Gadolinium occurs in minerals such as monazite and bastnäsite, with an abundance in the Earth's crust of about 6.2 milligrams per kilogram. World production of pure gadolinium is about 400 tonnes per year, drawn mainly from China, the US, Brazil, Sri Lanka, India, and Australia.