Rare earth elements play an essential role in many emerging technologies, from miniaturizing electronics and green tech applications, to strengthening permanent magnets' magnetic strength.
Prices increase when minerals become in short supply and companies seek new sources of production; however, new mines can take years to open.
Rare earth elements combine well with common metals such as iron to produce unique fluorescent, conductive or magnetic properties that make them useful in many consumer products and industrial processes. Their fluorescent qualities can aid chemical reactions faster by shortening reaction times.
Geologically rare earth elements are not particularly rare and can often be found in deposits with copper and tin, though their identification can be difficult. European chemists in the 19th century faced this same difficulty when trying to analyze mixed deposits for rare earth elements; Jons Jacob Berzelius isolated and named cerium and thorium while Carl Gustaf Mosander began systematic sorting out these compounds, discovering lanthanum, erbium and terbium among them.
Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner made history when they discovered nuclear fission of uranium in the 1930s, an insight that eventually lead to the creation of an atomic bomb. Following this breakthrough, scientists needed to purify their resultant uranium to remove impurities that might interfere with chain reactions by absorbing neutrons; rare earth chemist Frank Spedding provided an effective solution by isolating rare earth elements from it.
Mining companies currently search the world for rare earth minerals, but projects can often take years before reaching production stage. Africa remains untapped due to comparatively lower levels of exploration compared with Canada, Australia, and Latin America.
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Rare earths were essential components in early 20th-century national security technologies and consumer products like television screens, radios and batteries. As the United States became a global manufacturing powerhouse, its rare earth consumption skyrocketed while production decreased drastically; as these metals require complex extraction and processing steps that have since been outsourced overseas due to high-tech manufacturing's offshore expansion.
China supplied 97% of rare earths worldwide in 2010, due to a combination of government support, cheap labor and lax environmental regulations that enabled it to dominate this industry. Since then, they have tightened controls on exports in order to maintain stable supplies for domestic manufacturers.
But the country doesn't have enough reserves to meet future demand, prompting international search efforts for alternate sources of these essential materials. Some plans appear unrealistic - for instance extracting materials from coal waste - while others seem more feasible. Researchers are also exploring methods to make mining less environmentally damaging by decreasing toxic waste production or improving mineral separation efficiency.
One exciting development is an innovative technique for faster and cheaper separation of rare earths using organic molecules called ligands that have the power to pull rare earth metal atoms out of mixtures through chemical steps.
Rare earths play an essential role in energy transition technologies, helping create permanent magnets used by smartphones, wind turbines and electric vehicles to function reliably. Furthermore, their unique magnetic, phosphorescent and catalytic properties benefit various industries across many fields of endeavor.
Unfortunately, rare earth metals are difficult to isolate from each other and their ore, requiring costly and time-consuming mining operations. Their similar chemical structures make them easy to confuse; indeed, many "new elements" discovered between 1770-1820 turned out to be mixtures of multiple rare earth elements.
Despite these challenges, production of rare earth minerals remains highly concentrated geographically; three nations account for over one third of global cobalt, lithium and rare earth production.
Concentration can have serious geopolitical ramifications. China recently restricted rare earth exports in order to exert leverage against Japan; this caused prices to soar and left countries around the globe searching for alternative supplies. As a result, companies must design products using less rare earth metal or switching out for other materials as this will reduce production costs while making a difference to our environmental impact. Simply replacing individual magnets is not enough - demand must also decrease for these metals in general.
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Though called rare earth minerals, rare earth minerals are far from "rare." Instead, they're spread throughout Earth at relatively low concentrations; their true value only emerges through mining and processing operations; raw ore is typically worthless without further refinement into high-purity metals; this process often requires complex energy-intensive procedures and operations for success; making rare earth mining operations particularly costly operations.
China currently dominates global rare earth production, accounting for as much as 97%. China has capitalized on government support, cheap labor, and lax environmental regulations to become the unchallenged leader of rare earth production; prompting diversification efforts outside China as well as recycling methods to decrease dependency on virgin resources.
REE demand has seen rapid expansion as manufacturers embrace green technologies such as renewable energy and electric vehicles (EV). Production of permanent magnets was the largest end use of REEs in 2021, accounting for 43% of total demand. Magnets play an essential role in many electronics such as cell phones and computer monitors as well as car motors and wind turbines.
REEs are crucial components of energy technologies, including lithium-ion batteries and regenerative braking systems for cars and scooters. Rare earths also serve an array of high-tech applications like surgical lasers and positron emission tomography scintillation detectors - as well as military applications.