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Science 29 September 2000:
Vol. 289. no. 5488, pp. 2326 - 2329
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5488.2326
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Reports

Technique for Enhanced Rare Earth Separation

Tetsuya Uda,1* K. Thomas Jacob,2 Masahiro Hirasawa1

A process is demonstrated for the efficient separation of rare earth elements, using a combination of selective reduction and vacuum distillation of halides. The large differences in the redox chemistry of the rare earth elements and in the vapor pressures of rare earth di- and trihalides are exploited for separation. Experimental proof of concept is provided for the binary systems praseodymium-neodymium and neodymium-samarium. This process enhances the separation factor for the isolation of samarium and neodymium from their mixture by more than an order of magnitude.

1 Research Center for Metallurgical Process Engineering, Institute for Advanced Materials Processing, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan.
2 Department of Metallurgy, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: uda{at}iamp.tohoku.ac.jp

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)