Electrochemical Recovery and Behaviors of Rare Earth (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, and Yb) Ions on Ni Sheets

Min Hee Joo; So Jeong Park; Sung Min Hong; Choong Kyun Rhee; Youngku Sohn

doi:10.3390/ma13235314

Electrochemical Recovery and Behaviors of Rare Earth (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, and Yb) Ions on Ni Sheets

Materials (Basel). 2020 Nov 24;13(23):5314. doi: 10.3390/ma13235314.

Authors

Min Hee Joo^{1

2}, So Jeong Park¹, Sung Min Hong^{1

2}, Choong Kyun Rhee¹, Youngku Sohn^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Chungnam National University, Daejeon 34134, Korea.
² Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, Chungnam National University, Daejeon 34134, Korea.

Abstract

The electrochemical behaviors of rare earth (RE) ions have extensively been studied because of their high potential applications to the reprocessing of used nuclear fuels and RE-containing materials. In the present study, we fully investigated the electrochemical behaviors of RE(III) (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, and Yb) ions over a Ni sheet electrode in 0.1 M NaClO₄ electrolyte solution by cyclic voltammetry between +0.5 and -1.5 V (vs. Ag/AgCl). Amperometry electrodeposition experiments were performed between -1.2 and -0.9 V to recover RE elements over the Ni sheet. The successfully RE-recovered Ni sheets were fully characterized by scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The newly reported recovery data for RE(III) ions over a metal electrode provide valuable information on the development of the treatment methods of RE elements.

Keywords: actinide ions; amperometry electrodeposition; cyclic voltammetry; electrochemical recovery; rare earth ions.