Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths : Including Actinides

The rare earths represent a group of chemical elements, the lanthanides, together with scandium and yttrium, which exhibit similar chemical properties. They are strategically important to developed and developing nations because they have several applications in catalysis, the defense industry, aerospace, the materials and life sciences and in sustainable energy technologies.

The Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of the Rare Earths is a continuing authoritative series that deals with the science and technology of the rare earth elements in an integrated manner. Each chapter is a comprehensive, up-to-date, critical review of a particular segment of the field. The work offers the researcher and graduate student a complete and thorough coverage of this fascinating field.

• Individual chapters are comprehensive, broad, critical reviews
• Contributions are written by highly experienced, invited experts
• Gives an up-to-date overview of developments in the field

V.K. Pecharsky received a combined BSc/MSc degree in Chemistry (1976) and a PhD degree in Inorganic Chemistry (1979) from Lviv State University (now Ivan Franko National University of Lviv) in Ukraine. He held a faculty appointment at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at Lviv State University between 1979 and 1993, after which he moved to Ames, Iowa, where he became a staff member at the U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory. In 1998 he accepted a faculty position at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University, while remaining associated with Ames Laboratory. He was named an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Engineering in 2006. He also serves as a Faculty Scientists, Field Work Project Leader, and Group Leader at Ames Laboratory.
While in Lviv, V. Pecharsky was studying phase relationships and crystallography of ternary intermetallic compounds containing rare earths. After moving to Ames his research interests shifted to examining composition-structure-physical property relationship of rare-earth intermetallic compounds. Together with Karl Gschneidner, Jr., he discovered a new class of materials that exhibit the giant magnetocaloric effect in 1997, triggering worldwide interest in caloric materials and caloric cooling, which promises to become an energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional vapor-compression approach. Today his research interest include synthesis, structure, experimental thermodynamics, physical and chemical properties of intermetallic compounds containing rare-earth metals; anomalous behavior of 4f-electron systems; magnetostructural phase transformations; physical properties of ultra-pure rare earth metals; caloric materials and systems; hydrogen storage materials; mechanochemistry, mechanically induced solid-state reactions and mechanochemical transformations.
He organized the 28th Rare Earth Research Conference in Ames, Iowa in 2017. He serves as co-editor of the Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths and senior editor of the Journal of Alloys and Compounds. He has published over 500 WOS papers (>22 600 cites, h factor = 60).