Rare earths, 17 elements found near the bottom of the periodic table, play an essential role in electronics like Apple AirPods and iPhones as well as green technology applications, medical tools, and military hardware.
However, experts disagree and claim the world could survive without rare earths if China didn't monopolise their refining. Companies have recently attempted to break China's hold over rare earth refining.
Neodymium is one of the 17 elements found within the Lanthanides (commonly referred to as rare earths). This element is highly reactive, rapidly oxidizing in air. Neodymium alloys can be used to produce permanent magnets used as components in various electronic devices including computer data storage, speakers/loudspeakers, electric motors generators and wind turbines.
Neodymium can also be found in lasers made from yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) lasers and as a colouring agent to tint glass with appealing hues of purple. Furthermore, its compounds can be found in ceramic glazes and used to produce neodymium oxide.
Magnets are essential parts of electronic devices like loudspeakers and hard disk drives; mobile phones in particular. Their magnets generate an intense magnetic force which forms part of their electromagnetic fields - not to mention contributing sensitivity features such as light sensors or cameras.
Neodymium magnets for motor vehicles have some of the highest coercivity and heat resistance of all elements, maintaining their magnetic properties even with prolonged usage. Toyota has developed technologies to minimize deterioration of neodymium magnets over time; these could potentially be implemented into electric power steering motors within 10 years.
Neodymium magnets are currently produced in large quantities and play an essential role in many electrical systems - including electric car drivetrains. Unfortunately, their supply is limited - with China controlling 90% of global neodymium supplies; as prices for this metal surge rapidly some automakers have reduced their use.
Scientists first recognized neodymium in 1885 when Carl Auer von Welsbach combined didymium and nitric acid to form its nitrate salts - hence its name being derived from Greek words meaning new and twin (neos and didymos respectively). Due to its reactivity with air and its rapid reaction with other elements in air, storage must take place either under oil or plastic materials for maximum longevity and efficiency. Monazite and bastnaesite minerals mined to extract their metal through ion exchange and solvent extraction processes respectively.
Rare earth elements are essential components for renewable energy technology, yet demand could outstrip supply as demand skyrockets due to green technology. A report published by the 2020 Joint Research Centre stated that, without significant technological upgrades, terbium demand in 2030 may surpass projected supplies while praseodymium demands could rise beyond 175% of anticipated supplies and dysprosium needs could increase by 250% of expected supplies.
Dysprosium, with an atomic number 66 and metallic silver hue, can be found in many minerals such as xenotime and monazite sand. Although rare earths in general are relatively abundant, dysprosium is the least plentiful rare earth and hardest to extract and refine.
As with other rare earths, LSE can be extracted from its parent mineral by liquid-liquid extraction or ion exchange techniques; however, doing so requires significant energy expenditure, with impurities altering its properties significantly.
Dysprosium has many applications in various fields of science and industry. It is most frequently employed as part of nuclear reactor control rods to absorb neutrons, and to increase fiber optic communication speeds. Furthermore, dysprosium alloys used for military equipment, medical devices and lasers contain this element as one component.
Kesslerit is one of the heavier rare earths and, like neodymium, plays an essential part in creating permanent magnets used in wind turbines. But unlike its stronger counterpart, neodymium, it tends to fracture or corrode more readily - therefore manufacturers use additional components in order to produce stronger magnets with greater durability.
Like its sister metals neodymium and samarium, praseodymium cannot be used on its own as its magnetic strength drops over 80 degrees Celsius, but is instead often combined with these rare earth elements to produce super strong magnets with resilient magnetic fields. Praseodymium can also be found in film industry lighting as well as aircraft engines. Prismatic rare earths such as this rare earth material are particularly popular choice as alloying material due to their easy machining properties as well as being lightweight - perfect for making high performance motors and generators!
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Erbium (pronounced UR-bee-um) is one of the rare earths belonging to the Lanthanide series and can be found in many different minerals. Erbium-doped optical fibers allow us to send high definition TV signals over regular telephone conversations over long distances using copper wires as carriers of information; similarly copper wires used to carry phone conversations used only for voice and video messages.
Erbium was first identified in 1843 when Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander separated the "yttria" component of gadolinite mineral into three fractions he named yttria, erbia, and terbia. As expected, these similar names and properties caused some confusion; over time what had previously been terbia became known as erbium after 1860 while the original erbia became yttria after 1877. Georges Urbain and Charles James independently isolated fairly pure erbium oxide in 1905 while Wilhelm Klemm and Heinrich Bommer refined anhydrous erbium chloride by adding potassium vapor.
Erbium reacts well with all halogens to form various halides, while it also forms compounds with nickel and chromium that can help in producing stainless steel products. Erbium makes an excellent neutron absorber; its isotopes are used in nuclear reactor control rods.
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Erbium, like its sister material neodymium, is magnetic. However, unlike the latter material, its single f-electrons are protected by an envelope of valence electrons, making them less sensitive to demagnetizing forces than those found in neodymium and do not lose their magnetism when heated - making erbium ideal for permanent magnets which provide much higher energy efficiency than electromagnets.
Erbium's optical properties play an essential role in the creation of optical fibers - thin strands made of glass or plastic used to transmit communication signals over long distances. By adding erbium to an optical fiber, more light can be absorbed, increasing information capacity by up to twofold over existing copper phone lines. This explains why providers are opting to convert to optical fiber phone lines; adding them enables double more data transfer capacity on existing lines.
Yttrium is a silvery-metallic rare earth element. Although stable in bulk form, yttrium reacts with dilute acids like hydrofluoric acid (HF). However, due to an insoluble protective layer of YF3 that forms on its surface it remains unaffected by hydrofluoric acid's attack. When heated it readily turns to gas when heated white-hot; finely divided pieces readily turn into gas and spontaneously ignite when exposed to temperatures over 400 degC oxidizing rapidly or spontaneously combusting spontaneously!
As with other lanthanides, yttrium is a hard and brittle transition metal with up to 35 different isotopes. It occurs naturally as yttrium oxide (Y2O3) and chloride (YCl), with extraction methods using potassium reduction and chlorine extraction being possible from bastnasite ore.
Yttrium is most often employed for the production of LEDs and phosphors, acting as both solid electrolyte and oxygen sensor in automobile exhaust systems. Additionally, yttrium can also be found in spark plugs used as part of high performance spark plugs; its presence provides solid electrolyte functionality as well as oxygen sensor sensors in automobile exhaust systems. Furthermore, electronic filters, lasers, electronic filters for CRT televisions/monitors as well as jewelry also contain this element; its radioactive isotope (YAG 90) also have various medical uses including treating lymphomas/leukemias/leukemias/ovarian/COL/PANC cancers using monoclonal antibodies targeting cancerous cells before killing off these cancerous cells by binding monoclonal antibodies bound by these monoclonal antibodies before killing off these cancer cells that have formed.
Due to its exceptional magnetic properties and stability, yttrium is increasingly being utilized as a permanent magnet material, with more powerful permanent magnets being produced with this metal than those made from neodymium or dysprosium. Magnetism in this material comes from its individual f-electrons, each of which possesses a synchronized spin and is protected from demagnetizing forces by an outer shell of valence electrons. Magnets that do not degrade over time make these magnets ideal for use in applications like magnetic resonance imaging machines and electric motors. Cold War arms races of the mid to late 20th century saw massive government-funded research into rare earth elements used for radar equipment and rocket propellant. Samarium-cobalt magnets helped to produce more powerful missiles while yttrium-aluminum-garnet lasers provided guidance systems for guided weapons.