Erbium(III) chloride is a violet solid with the formula . It is used in the preparation of
erbium metal.
Preparation
Anhydrous erbium(III) chloride can be produced by the
ammonium chloride route
Lanthanide trichlorides are a family of inorganic compound with the formula Ln Cl3, where Ln stands for a lanthanide metal. The trichlorides are standard reagents in applied and academic chemistry of the lanthanides. They exist as anhydrous solids ...
.
[
] In the first step,
erbium(III) oxide is heated with
ammonium chloride to produce the ammonium salt of the pentachloride:
:
In the second step, the ammonium chloride salt is converted to the trichloride by heating in a vacuum at 350-400 ºC:
:
Structural data
Erbium(III) chloride forms crystals of the
type, with
monoclinic crystals and the
point group
In geometry, a point group is a mathematical group of symmetry operations (isometries in a Euclidean space) that have a fixed point in common. The coordinate origin of the Euclidean space is conventionally taken to be a fixed point, and every p ...
''C''2/m.
Erbium(III) chloride hexahydrate also forms monoclinic crystals with the point group of ''P''2/''n'' (''P''2/''c'') - ''C''
42h. In this compound, erbium is octa-coordinated to form ions with the isolated completing the structure.
Optical properties
Erbium(III) chloride solutions show a
negative nonlinear absorption effect.
Catalytic properties
The use of erbium(III) chloride as a
catalyst has been demonstrated in the
acylation of
alcohols
In chemistry, an alcohol is a type of organic compound that carries at least one hydroxyl () functional group bound to a saturated carbon atom. The term ''alcohol'' originally referred to the primary alcohol ethanol (ethyl alcohol), which is ...
and
phenols and in an
amine functionalisation of
furfural
Furfural is an organic compound with the formula C4H3OCHO. It is a colorless liquid, although commercial samples are often brown. It has an aldehyde group attached to the 2-position of furan. It is a product of the dehydration of sugars, as occurs ...
.
[''Synthesis of trans-4,5-Bis-dibenzylaminocyclopent-2-enone from Furfural Catalyzed by ErCl3·6H2O'' Mónica S. Estevão, Ricardo J. V. Martins, and Carlos A. M. Afonso Journal of Chemical Education 2017 94 (10), 1587-1589 ] It is a catalyst for
Friedel–Crafts-type reactions, and can be used in place of
cerium(III) chloride
Cerium(III) chloride (CeCl3), also known as cerous chloride or cerium trichloride, is a compound of cerium and chlorine. It is a white hygroscopic salt; it rapidly absorbs water on exposure to moist air to form a hydrate, which appears to be of v ...
for
Luche reductions.
References
{{Lanthanide halides
Erbium compounds
Chlorides
Lanthanide halides