In 1934, Wilhelm Klemm and Heinrich Bommer reduced the anhydrous chloride with potassium vapor to produce fairly pure erbium metal. Properties of erbium Similar to other lanthanides or rare earth ...

To integrate erbium atoms into such a crystal—in technical jargon, to dope it—it first had to be endowed with nanometer-fine structures. They serve as light-conducting elements.

At temperatures close to absolute zero, a cloud of about 70,000 erbium atoms forms a magnetic Bose-Einstein condensate. In a condensate, the particles lose their individual properties and ...