Is erbium man made

Answer 1

The element Erbium is a 'rare earth metal' or lanthanoid; in its pure state, it is a soft and malleable silver-white metal. Its element is 68; its atomic symbol is Er. It is a natural solid, having a melting point of 1529 degrees centigrade. It has a relative Atomic Mass of 167.259, an atomic radius of 175.7 picometers, and a density of 9.07 grams per cubic centimeter. Like other lanthanoid metals, Erbium does not occur naturally as a pure metal; it is usually found mixed into mineral conglomerates called monaxite sand ores, which are complicated mixtures of a variety of lanthanoids with phosphorus and oxygen. Pure Erbium must be chemically reduced from a metallic salt which is extracted from the mineral ores in a complex, difficult, and potentially dangerous process involving sulfuric acid. Lanthanoids are not quite as 'rare' as the term rare earth might suggest, but because they are difficult to separate they have only become comercially available as pure metals due to recent advances in ion-exchange purification technology.

Answer: No, but it must be extracted from other materials to be pure erbium.