Thulium

Thulium is a chemical element; it has symbol Tm and atomic number 69. It is the thirteenth element in the lanthanide series of metals. It is the second-least abundant lanthanide in the Earth's crust, after radioactively unstable promethium. It is an easily workable metal with a bright silvery-gray luster. It is fairly soft and slowly tarnishes in air. Despite its high price and rarity, thulium is used as a dopant in solid-state lasers. It has no significant biological role and is not particularly toxic. Artificial radioactive isotopes of thulium are used as radiation sources in some portable X-ray devices. In 1879, the Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve separated two previously unknown components, which he called holmia and thulia, from the rare-earth mineral erbia; these were the oxides of holmium and thulium, respectively. His example of thulium oxide contained impurities of ytterbium oxide. A relatively pure sample of thulium oxide was first obtained in 1911. The metal itself was first obtained in 1936 by Wilhelm Klemm and Heinrich Bommer. Like the other lanthanides, its most common oxidation state is +3, seen in its oxide, halides and other compounds. In aqueous solution, like compounds of other late lanthanides, soluble thulium compounds form coordination complexes with nine water molecules.