First Scientist on Complete Separation of Single Rare Earth Element - Youmo Li

Youmo Li is China's first person of complete separation of the single rare earth element. He is a scientist unknown to the public. A few decades ago, Youmo Li actively responded to the call of the party and the state to participate in supporting the construction of the Northeast, and assigned to the work of Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry of Chinese Academy of Science (CIAC) until retiring.

He has worked in the fields of nuclear fuel waste aftertreatment, separation, and extraction of rare earth elements, high-temperature superconducting materials, and rare earth luminescent materials. In 1954, some scholars proposed an ion-exchange method for separating rare earths by using copper as a retardant and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) as a leaching agent. The shortcoming of this method is that during the separation process, along with the acidity increases, EDTA crystal precipitation would precipitate in the process to block or hinder the circulation of the solution in the exchange column and seriously affect the separation result.

After a series of experiments, Li's team innovatively proposed adding a small amount of ammonium acetate to the EDTA eluent to overcome the crystallization of EDTA during the separation process. At the same time, thoroughly tested the specific separation conditions. In the end, satisfactory results came to all various scales experiments.

In 1958, many institutes including CIAC carried out the complete separation of the rare metals, formed a leap forward situation. In July of the same year, the group led by Youmo Li used the ion exchange method to separate 15 high-purity single elements for the first time. Among them, europium used the zinc powder reduction method. The scientist Youmo Li has thus become the first person to completely separate the single rare earth element.

His team obtained a certain amount of various single oxides by expanding experiments. The purity of the 15 pure rare earths isolated was all reached a spectral purity. Some samples exceeded the Soviet standard samples and the products of Johnson Company of the UK. Provided basic conditions for domestic production. Later on, his research orientation shifted from solution chemistry to solid chemistry, first on luminescent materials research, then on high-temperature superconducting materials.

As a scientist, Youmo Li cultivates a group of outstanding talents in CIAC and finishes many ordinary and innovative works, while he never publicizes and always takes the research as a hobby. He has made great contributions to our country’s rare earth industry.

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