The Birth and Revolution of Rare Earth Metals

 

Rare Earth Metals

The Rare Earth Metals are 17 metallic elements with atomic numbers 21, 39, and 57-71 that are found in the middle of the periodic chart. These metals have remarkable luminous, conductive, and magnetic properties, making them extremely valuable when alloyed, or mixed, in small amounts with more common metals like iron.. Rare earths, on the other hand, are never discovered in great concentrations and are frequently found combined with one another or with radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium.

Rare earth metals are used in a variety of everyday technology, including cellphones, LED lighting, and hybrid vehicles. A few rare earth elements are employed in oil refining and nuclear power; others are used in wind turbines and electric vehicles; and more specialized applications arise in medicine and manufacturing.

Discovery and commercialization

The term rare earth metals was coined in 1788, when a miner discovered an uncommon black rock in Ytterbium, Sweden. The ore was dubbed "rare" because it had never been seen before, and "earth" because it was the 18th-century geology name for rocks that could dissolve in acid. Johan Gasoline, a chemist, named this hitherto unknown "earth" yttrium after the town where it was discovered in 1794. Ytterby's mines removed rocks that yielded four elements called after the town (yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, and erbium).

Otto Hahn, Lies Meitner, and Fritz Stresemann discovered nuclear fission of uranium in 1939, which led to the development of the atomic bomb, and found rare earth metals in fission products.

Learning to use earth metals

These batteries could be recharged repeatedly while retaining a significant amount of energy in relation to their volume,In the 1990s, they were widely employed in portable devices such as video cameras, and in hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius, which was debuted in 2001. In the 1980s, General Motors researchers invented neodymium-iron-boron magnets and founded Magnequench, which manufactured the lightweight, powerful permanent magnets used in power windows, door locks, windscreen wiper motors and electric engine starters. As personal computers became more common in American homes and companies during the 1990s, Magnequench quickly discovered a lucrative market in supplying tiny magnets for computer hard drives.