Review of separation and concentration techniques for impurities in rare earth-based materials for further spectral and mass spectral analysis

Abstract

The effectiveness of using materials based on rare earth elements (REE) largely depends on their impurity composition, which affects their structure and properties. Before the analytical quality control of REE-based materials and initial substances for their production, it is necessary to determine both macrocomponents and impurity elements with high sensitivity and accuracy. A complex of atomic emission and mass spectral analytical methods is often used for the determination of impurities in REE-based materials in the range from 10–5 to 5.0 wt.%. However, the analysis of such materials, even using these modern high-sensitivity methods is a difficult task due to spectral and matrix interferences. Therefore, different preliminary separation/concentration procedures are needed to determine both rare earth and other impurities. This article reviews publications is devoted to preconcentration methods for spectral and mass spectral analysis of REEbased materials and, in part, a number of other analytical techniques. It was shown that the most common approaches are liquid extraction and chromatography. Sorption, cloud-point extraction and coprecipitation are also used. There is no universal method. Each of the methods discussed in this article has its own advantages and limitations. The analytical completion of the method confirms the effectiveness of the selected separation/concentration method in each specific case.