Classes of metals products with soft bases, which are bases with covalent bonds. The IUPAC Gold Book provides a more general definition of a class (a) metal ion, as "A metal ion that combines preferentially with ligands containing ligating atoms that are the lightest of their Periodic Group", and a class (b) metal as one that combines preferentially with ligands containing ligating atoms other than the lightest of their Periodic Group. Classes of metals Class A metals are metals that form hard acids. Hard acids are acids with relatively ionic bonds. These metals, such as iron, aluminium, titanium, sodium, calcium and the lanthanides,
Group 3 element concentrated sources of this element, the latter containing up to 45% of scandium in the form of scandium(III) oxide. Yttrium has the same trend in occurrence places; it is found in lunar rock samples collected during the American Apollo Project in a relatively high content as well. The principal commercially viable ore of lutetium is the rare-earth phosphate mineral monazite, (Ce,La,etc.)PO, which contains 0.003% of the element. The main mining areas are China, United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka and Australia. Pure lutetium metal is one of the rarest and most expensive of the rare-earth metals with the price about