History
Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of the periodic table, predicted the existence of an element ekaboron, with an atomic mass between 40 and 48 in 1869. Lars Fredrik Nilson and his team detected this element in the minerals euxenite and gadolinite. Nilson prepared 2 grams of scandium oxide of high purity. He named the element scandium, from the Latin Scandia meaning "Scandinavia". Nilson was apparently unaware of Mendeleev's prediction, but Per Teodor Cleve recognized the correspondence and notified Mendeleev.
Metallic scandium was produced for the first time in 1937 by electrolysis of a eutectic mixture, at 700–800 °C, of potassium, lithium, and scandium chlorides. The first pound of 99% pure scandium metal was produced in 1960. The use for aluminium alloys began in 1971, following a US patent. Aluminium-scandium alloys were also developed in the USSR.
Laser crystals of gadolinium-scandium-gallium garnet (GSGG) were used in strategic defense applications developed in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the 1980s and the 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Scandium
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