Dysprosium enrichment and collection using AVLIS in Brazil: Preliminary results

Abstract

Rare Earth elements (RE) play an important role in the high-tech industry. Displays, fine electronic devices, sensors, optoelectronics, and many other fields rely on the use of these elements to deliver the technology we depend on. The possibility of improving the capacity of all these applications is attractive and there are a few ways to achieve that, one of them is to purify the REs to get only one isotope. Given that, one of the few techniques able to separate RE isotopes is the Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) which is the technique used in the Brazilian facility for isotope separation via laser. In this work we are going to show the latest results on the Brazilian AVLIS applied to enrich dysprosium. As a preliminary result, it was observed an enrichment by means of a mass spectrometer coupled to the experimental setup and a thin film was collected with an enrichment factor of 1.37 (163Dy).