ABSTRACT
Investigations of the binary phase diagrams of magnesium with individual rare earth
metals were started in early 20th century and went on actually up to the present. Some
significant investigations of the phase diagrams were carried out only recently and,
therefore, might not be still included in most known reference books. The first investi-
gations were conducted on systems with cerium and two other elements of the cerium
subgroup, lanthanum and praseodymium [46,66-71] . Investigations of the phase diagrams
with other rare earth metals were undertaken later. Amongst them great attention was paid
to the systems M g - N d and M g - Y which were of the most importance for commercial
alloys [72-76] . A l o n g with these the phase diagrams of the systems M g - G d [77], M g - Y b
[78], M g - E u [79] and M g - S c [80, 81] were studied, as wel l . In [82, 83] some M g - R E
phase diagrams were investigated on the R E sides. The latter investigations showed signifi-
cant solid solubility of magnesium in the rare earth metals and eutectoid decomposition of
the high temperature phases with the body-centred cubic crystal structure in these parts of
the systems. The phase diagiams of magnesium with other rare earth metals were studied
over the whole concentration range mainly only in late 1980s and early 1990s by R. Ferro
with co-workers [84-88]. In Baikov Institute of Metallurgy the M g - R E phase diagrams
were studied on the magnesium sides in detail [89-108]. Many efforts were made also to
investigate the crystal structure of many binary compounds formed in the M g - R E systems
[109-137]. The M g - R E phase diagrams were revised and evaluated in many reviews [106,
138-144] .
