The trade in rare earth metals has two basic tiers. The cheaper variety is typically referred to as “reduced” and tends to come in brownie-sized cakes. At the normal 99.9% it is nominally less pure than the dendritic or “distilled” type that is refined to 99.95% or 99.99% purity (3N5 or 4N to use industry lingo).

Strangely, samarium is the lone exception to the rule in that the more desirable dendritic type shown is rated at 99.9% by our suppliers AND is also marginally cheaper. We were ready to assume this was simply a mistake in labeling but found this also to be the case with two other suppliers. Since the labs are generally very tight-lipped with technical information our theory is that this is simply the case of these labs having received their distilled samarium from the same parent source and, having been refined to a lower than normal purity, are pricing the commodity accordingly. This suspicion may be confirmed in the coming months if these labs start stocking distilled samarium of higher purity.

All the same, we think few will find fault with this “mere” 3N samarium considering the savings and its inherent attractiveness!

Note additional options for this element on the Ampules section