How to Use yttrium in a Sentence

yttrium

noun
  • Yttrium and neodymium are alloyed to make the magnets in turbines for windmills.
    — Nelson Ching, National Geographic, 10 June 2016
  • In some cases, such as with the soft metal yttrium, customers are willing to pay more than 10 times the price.
    — John Liu, CNN Money, 5 June 2025
  • The tape is made up of yttrium barium copper oxide deposited on a steel substrate.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 15 July 2023
  • Rare earths include elements such as neodymium, used in magnets, and yttrium, used for electronics.
    — Washington Post, 19 Sep. 2019
  • Bone doesn't allow the ultrasonic sound waves through, but this special blend of yttrium and zirconium does.
    — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 2 Aug. 2017
  • The new rules bar exports of rare earths such as dysprosium, yttrium or samarium which play tiny but vital roles in cars, planes, weapons and consumer electronics.
    — Reuters, NBC news, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Elements were frequently named for the town or region where they were discovered, sometimes in a very provincial manner, as was the case with yttrium.
    — Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Discover Magazine, 21 Sep. 2011
  • Solids are memorable The case for ions in crystal, like ytterbium in yttrium-aluminum-garnet, is a bit different.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 30 Nov. 2019
  • To explore the effect, the team used yttrium iron garnet, a ferrimagnetic insulator known for its long spin wave lifetime.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 29 Nov. 2025
  • The manganese crusts are also estimated to contain other rare earth metals, such as neodymium, yttrium and dysprosium.
    — Laura Paddison, CNN, 30 Jan. 2023
  • For instance, yttrium, one of the metals included in this recent discovery, can be used to make camera lenses, superconductors and cell phone screens.
    — Aj Willingham, CNN, 16 Apr. 2018
  • The aquatic plant contains the elements platinum and rhodium, along with rare-earth elements like neodymium, lanthanum, yttrium and dysprosium.
    — Devika Rao, theweek, 22 May 2024
  • And geopolitical hawks worry that China is by far the world’s biggest supplier of materials like yttrium.
    — Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times, 26 Feb. 2025
  • Today, yttrium is used in lighting and flat screens; ytterbium in cancer treatments and earthquake monitoring; erbium in lasers and fiberoptic cables.
    — Charlie Campbell, Time, 17 June 2025
  • Rare earths include 17 metallic elements in the periodic table made up of scandium, yttrium and the lanthanides.
    — Ramishah Maruf, CNN Money, 30 Oct. 2025
  • Rare earths include 17 metallic elements in the periodic table made up of scandium, yttrium and the lanthanides.
    — Ramishah Maruf, CNN Money, 11 Oct. 2025
  • Even with the exemption, Chinese export volumes for unpronounceable but irreplaceable things like yttrium and dysprosium are still way down, and prices are way up.
    — Tim McDonnell, semafor.com, 14 May 2026
  • The team found that adding phosphorus to sodium-yttrium-silicate glasses can help develop next-generation sodium-ion batteries.
    — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 20 Feb. 2026
  • The analyst added that these permanent magnets use elements such as samarium-cobalt and neodymium-iron-boron molecules or yttrium, a rare earth metal used to prevent corrosion.
    — Lisa Kailai Han, CNBC, 13 Oct. 2025
  • The most common heavy rare-earth elements—dysporosium, terbium, and yttrium—are used in the heavy-duty magnets which power EV motors and military tech.
    — Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 18 Nov. 2025
  • Nitrogen is put in diamond, phosphorous in silicon, and ytterbium in yttrium-aluminum-garnet crystals.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 30 Nov. 2019
  • Your ophthalmologist will use a yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) laser to make an opening in the cloudy capsule, allowing light to pass and making your vision clear again.
    — Suchandrima Bhowmik, Health, 23 Mar. 2025
  • For scandium and yttrium combined, the country now takes 14% of China’s exports, according to customs data, while Japan is the biggest buyer.
    — Bloomberg, Mercury News, 17 Apr. 2025
  • Those rare earths included samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium.
    — Steve Banker, Forbes.com, 12 May 2025
  • Typically, such magnonic waveguides are produced by processing yttrium-iron-garnet (YIG) into rodlike shapes.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 16 Feb. 2024
  • The team’s superconductor of choice was yttrium barium copper oxide, or YBCO.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 15 July 2023
  • These new materials, such as the ceramic known as yttrium barium copper oxide, became a superconductor at 93 Kelvin—still cold, but not absolute-zero cold.
    — Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 15 Aug. 2023
  • The reactors use the superconducting tape, which is typically made of yttrium barium copper oxide, in powerful electromagnets.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 26 June 2025
  • The superconductor in question is a steel ribbon, coated with yttrium-barium-copper oxide, or YBCO.
    — Eric Limer, Popular Mechanics, 9 Mar. 2018
  • Heavy REEs—those with high atomic numbers, including dysprosium, yttrium, and terbium—are most commonly extracted from masses of clay formed through eons of weathering of igneous rocks such as granite.
    — Bydennis Normile, science.org, 1 Nov. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'yttrium.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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