Nickel in Terbium Metal and Its Characterization by Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy-Original Position Statistic Distribution Analysis

The application of terbium involved in giant magnetostrictive materials, phosphors, magneto-optical storage materials, magneto-optical glass, and so on. The requirement of content of nickel is stringent for most of the materials. The distributions of nickel in terbium by Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy-original position statistic distribution analysis (LIBS-OPA) and the reason of difficult removal of nickel by vacuum distillation but easy removal by SSE had been mainly discussed in this paper. Terbium ingot prepared by electron-beam smelting after vacuum distillation was processed into rod of 0.76 cm in diameter and 15 cm in length. The solid state electrotransport (SSE) experiment was done to the rod at 1100°C and 450 A cm-2 for 100 h under UHV (10-7 Pa) conditions. LIBS-OPA was used to acquire the local distribution of nickel in terbium after SSE purification in this study. The result of this study showed that nickel particles transported by the passing current from anode to cathode. This result was consistent with the result of glow discharge mass spectrometry (GDMS) analysis to the whole rod. LIBS-OPA is a promising approach which could be used to analyze the distributions of micro and trace impurities in other metals and alloys.  Highlights: Distribution of Ni in terbium after SSE had been obviously observed by LIBS-OPA. Nickel in Terbium is difficult to be removed by vacuum distillation, but after Solid State Electrotransport (SSE) for relative long time, content of Nickel can be greatly reduced. The main reason of the difficult removal of nickel by vacuum distillation and easy removal by SSE had been discussed in detail in this study.