Yttrium Symbol (Y): Uses, Price and Where It Is Mined

The chemical symbol for yttrium is Y. It is element 39 on the periodic table, with a relative atomic mass of 88.906 (Royal Society of Chemistry). It is a soft, silvery metal that miners and traders group with the rare earths, and its main uses are in ceramics and phosphors, the powders that make light in LEDs and screens (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, 2026). This page gives the symbol and key facts first, then the seven main uses, the minerals and mines it comes from, dated prices, and a short checklist for anyone assessing a yttrium project.

Yttrium symbol and element facts

The symbol Y comes from the name, which honours Ytterby, a village near Stockholm. In 1787 Karl Arrhenius found an unusual black rock in a quarry there, and in 1794 Johan Gadolin showed that it held a new “earth”, yttrium oxide (Royal Society of Chemistry). The table below gives the numbers most readers look for.

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Yttrium is more common in the crust than lead

Average crustal abundance, parts per million (selected elements)

Yttrium has atomic number 39, which is lower than the 15 lanthanides (57 to 71), yet geologists count it as a rare-earth element because it behaves like them and turns up in the same deposits. The USGS puts it with the heavy rare earths for that reason (USGS Fact Sheet 2014-3078). The name “rare” is misleading: at 33 ppm in the average crust, yttrium is more common than lead (14 ppm), and the chart shows it sits close to lanthanum and neodymium. What is rare is a deposit where it is concentrated enough to mine.

Yttrium uses: seven main applications

The USGS says the leading end uses of yttrium, in the United States and worldwide, are ceramics and phosphors, with smaller amounts going into fiber optics, optical glass, pigments and yttrium-aluminum-garnet (YAG) crystals for lasers (USGS, 2026). The table lists seven uses, what the yttrium does in each, and where the claim comes from. No source gives a reliable share of demand for each use, so the table does not invent one.

The coating use explains much of the recent price news. A 1976 NASA paper found that zirconia stabilised with yttria, sprayed over a thin alloy bond coat, can reduce metal temperatures and cooling needs on turbine parts (NASA Technical Reports Server, 1976). In 2025 Reuters reported that the Aerospace Industries Association called yttrium essential to the most advanced jet engines, and that yttrium coatings also protect turbine blades in gas power plants (Reuters, 18 November 2025).

Yttrium uses in everyday life

Most people meet yttrium without knowing it. The common uses for yttrium in daily life are:

• Lighting and screens: yttrium, europium and terbium phosphors are the red, green and blue light sources in many bulbs, panels and televisions (USGS Fact Sheet 2014-3078). Early colour television tubes used yttrium oxysulfide for the red.
• Camera lenses: yttrium oxide is added to lens glass for heat and shock resistance.
• Flying and power: coatings on jet engine parts and gas turbine blades.
• Chips: the Reuters report quotes industry sources who describe yttrium as a protective coating and insulator in semiconductor making.
• Hospitals: yttrium-90 treatments for some liver cancers.

Yttrium is not a plant nutrient or fertiliser. The Royal Society of Chemistry notes that it has no known biological role and that its soluble salts are mildly toxic.

Where yttrium is mined and which minerals hold it

Yttrium is never mined on its own. It comes out of rare-earth mineral concentrates, and the mix of rare earths in the ore decides how much yttrium a mine can sell. Xenotime, a yttrium phosphate, can contain up to 50% yttrium phosphate and is mined in China and Malaysia; yttrium also occurs in monazite and bastnaesite (Royal Society of Chemistry). The USGS lists the large resources as monazite and xenotime in placer (river and beach sand) deposits, carbonatites (igneous rocks made mainly of carbonate minerals), uranium ores and weathered clay deposits where the rare earths are held on clay surfaces, known as ion-adsorption ore (USGS, 2026).

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Where US yttrium imports came from

Share of imported yttrium alloys, compounds and metal, 2021-24 shipping records

The ore type matters because yttrium is a small part of the light-rare-earth ores that dominate world mining. At the Mountain Pass mine in California, the USGS estimates that yttrium makes up about 0.12% of the rare-earth elements in the bastnaesite ore. Monazite concentrates that include yttrium-rich xenotime come from heavy-mineral-sand operations in Florida, and there was no fully commercial facility in the United States able to separate or refine yttrium (USGS, 2026). Heavy-rare-earth ores such as xenotime sands and ion-adsorption clays carry far more yttrium per tonne of rare earths than bastnaesite does.

Production, reserves and who supplies the world

The USGS estimated 2025 world mine production at 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes of yttrium oxide equivalent contained in rare-earth concentrates. It estimated that China produced most of the world supply and that Burma produced a significant share. Global yttrium reserves have not been quantified; the countries with the largest total rare-earth oxide reserves are Australia, Brazil, China, Russia and Vietnam (USGS, 2026). Outside China, Iluka Resources is building a rare-earths refinery at Eneabba in Western Australia. On its 2026 half-year results call the company said construction was 60% complete and first feedstock would arrive in 2027, and that it plans to sell a heavy-rare-earths-plus-yttrium carbonate to Western separators (Iluka half-year results call transcript). For wider context, see our guides to the rarest metals and the rarest minerals.

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Yttrium price: oxide, metal and the China gap

There is no single yttrium price. Traders quote yttrium oxide (Y2O3) and yttrium metal separately, at different purities, and in different places, and the gaps are now very large. The USGS publishes an annual average, FOB (loaded on a ship) China, from Argus. For 99.999% pure oxide it was US$6 per kilogram in 2021, US$12 in 2022, US$8 in 2023, US$6 in 2024 and an estimated US$9 in 2025; for 99.9% metal it was US$39, US$41, US$33, US$33 and US$40. The USGS says the 2025 average rose 42% for oxide and 22% for metal against 2024 (USGS, 2026).

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Average yttrium prices, FOB China

US$ per kilogram, annual average (2025 estimated)

Those averages describe the Chinese market. Prices for material that can actually be delivered outside China have moved far higher, as the next section shows. A buyer or an analyst should always ask three things: oxide or metal, what purity, and delivered where.

Why supply is tight: export controls and import reliance

In April 2025 China added yttrium metals, oxides, alloys and compounds to its export controls. In November 2025 the United States said China would issue general licenses that effectively removed the April controls, but as of December 2025, the date of the USGS report, the April controls were still in force, although China had begun to issue general licenses to selected exporters. China exported an estimated 1,600 tonnes (oxide equivalent) of yttrium compounds and metal in 2025, mostly to Japan, South Korea, the United States and Germany, in that order (USGS, 2026).

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Yttrium oxide price by market and date

US$ per kilogram; markets and dates differ, so read each bar on its own

The market outside China reacted at once. Argus assessed yttrium oxide at US$50 to US$70 per kilogram cost, insurance and freight (CIF) Europe on 26 June 2025, up from US$45 to US$65 a week earlier, because business was no longer possible below US$50 (Argus Media, 26 June 2025). By November 2025 European oxide stood at US$270 per kilogram, up 4,400% since January, while Chinese prices were around US$7 (Reuters via AJOT, 18 November 2025). Outside-China quotes vary widely by purity, terms and source: a June 2026 secondary report cited US$457.50 per kilogram at Rotterdam and a separate European indication of US$1,175 (InvestorNews, 11 September 2026). By May 2026 Argus data cited by Reuters showed oxide prices outside China at nearly US$1,100 per kilogram, about 140 times the level before the controls (The Oregon Group, 10 June 2026). On 10 September 2026 the Shanghai Metal Market listed Chinese yttrium oxide at US$7.63 to US$7.90 per kilogram and 99.9% metal, delivered in China, at US$34.21 to US$35.52 on 9 September (InvestorNews, 11 September 2026). Fastmarkets also publishes a weekly 99.999% oxide assessment, ex-warehouse Rotterdam (symbol MB-RAE-0009, launched 7 August 2025); the values are sold by subscription (Fastmarkets).

Import reliance explains why the US felt it. The USGS gives US net import reliance for yttrium as 100% in every year from 2021 to 2025. Shipping records for 2021 to 2024 showed imports of yttrium alloys, compounds and metal coming from China (70%), Germany (11%), Austria (8%), South Korea (4%) and others (7%), and nearly all of it was made from concentrates processed in China. Reuters reported in November 2025 that ReElement Technologies, based in Indiana, planned to produce yttrium oxide at 200 tonnes a year by December 2025, rising to 400 tonnes by March 2026. In a company update on 26 March 2026, ReElement said its Marion, Indiana, Phase 1 refinery expected initial production in the third quarter of 2026, with no yttrium oxide output reported in that update (ReElement update, 26 March 2026; earlier plan from Reuters via AJOT). Substitutes exist for some uses but are generally much less effective; in electronics, lasers and phosphors yttrium is generally not directly replaced (USGS, 2026).

How explorers look for yttrium-bearing ground

Exploration for yttrium is rare-earth exploration with a twist: the target is the heavy end of the rare-earth mix. Teams look for the settings the USGS names as important rare-earth hosts (carbonatites, alkaline igneous rocks, ion-adsorption clays and monazite-xenotime placers), then confirm with sampling and assays of the individual rare earths (USGS Fact Sheet 2014-3078). Only assay results show how much yttrium sits in the rock; no satellite image can give a grade.

What satellite data can do is narrow the search before anyone drives to site: it maps outcrops, alteration, clay cover and heavy-mineral beach belts across a license area, so the first samples go where they are most useful. Farmonaut’s satellite mineral detection service covers rare earth elements among more than 20 minerals, with a typical delivery of 5 to 20 business days from a KML, KMZ or polygon boundary, and up to 80-85% lower early-exploration cost than ground-only programmes. The output is a ranked set of exploration targets ahead of a resource estimate, not a JORC or NI 43-101 resource. You can read about the satellite-based mineral detection service, send a boundary through the mining query form, or contact the team with questions.

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What to check before backing a yttrium project

For consultants and investors comparing projects, these are the questions that separate a real yttrium story from a rare-earth story with yttrium in the title:

1. Yttrium share of total rare-earth oxide (TREO). Ask for the assay split, not only the headline TREO grade. Bastnaesite ores carry a small yttrium share; xenotime and clay ores carry far more.
2. Mineralogy. Xenotime, monazite, bastnaesite and ion-adsorption clay need different processing, so check which one the feasibility work assumes.
3. Who separates it. Iluka’s plan to sell a mixed carbonate shows that even a refiner may leave yttrium separation to someone else. A concentrate that cannot be separated outside China has fewer buyers.
4. The price basis. Check whether a model uses a Chinese domestic price, an FOB China export price or a European delivered price. The gap between them has been a factor of 100 or more.
5. Policy exposure. China’s export licensing affects both the cost of competing material and the markets a project can sell into.
6. Land and rights. Check who owns the minerals and what they are worth; our guide on mineral rights value per acre explains the factors.

The calculator below estimates how much yttrium oxide a rare-earth concentrate contains and what it might be worth at a price you choose. Enter your own tonnage, grade, yttrium share and recovery.

Frequently asked questions

What is the chemical symbol for yttrium?

The symbol is Y. Yttrium is element 39 in group 3 of the periodic table.

What is the atomic number and mass of yttrium?

The atomic number is 39 and the relative atomic mass is 88.906 (Royal Society of Chemistry).

What is yttrium used for?

The leading uses are ceramics and phosphors, followed by fiber optics, optical glass, pigments and YAG laser crystals (USGS, 2026). Other uses include thermal barrier coatings, alloys, superconductors and the medical isotope yttrium-90.

What are common uses of yttrium in everyday life?

White LED lights, screens, camera-lens glass, jet-engine and turbine coatings, and some cancer treatments. Most people never handle yttrium directly; it sits inside a component.

Is yttrium a rare earth element?

Yes. Although its atomic number is 39, the USGS counts it as a rare-earth element because of its chemical and physical similarity to the lanthanides, and it typically occurs in the same deposits.

Where is yttrium mined?

It is recovered from rare-earth concentrates. The USGS estimates China produced most of the 2025 supply, and Burma a significant share. Xenotime is mined in China and Malaysia (Royal Society of Chemistry).

How much does yttrium cost?

It depends on form and place. The Shanghai Metal Market listed Chinese yttrium oxide at US$7.63 to US$7.90 per kilogram on 10 September 2026, while Argus data showed oxide outside China at nearly US$1,100 per kilogram in May 2026. Metal costs more than oxide.

Why did the price of yttrium rise so much?

China added yttrium to its export controls in April 2025, which cut shipments abroad. Prices inside China stayed low while prices outside China jumped.

Is yttrium a fertilizer or plant nutrient?

No. It has no known biological role (Royal Society of Chemistry).

Does the United States produce yttrium?

Not in separated form. The US imported nearly all of its yttrium (net import reliance 100%), and no fully commercial facility could separate or refine it in the USGS report.

Can satellites detect yttrium?

Satellites map surface geology that can point to rare-earth host rocks, such as alteration, clay cover and outcrops. Only drilling and laboratory assays confirm yttrium content and grade.