Rare-earth elements (REEs) play a critical role in a range of high-tech devices, from smartphones and digital cameras to computer hard disks and electronic displays. They are also vital to clean energy initiatives and defence technologies, where large quantities of specific REEs are essential to function.
In lighting, screens, and glass manufacturing, various REEs are used both individually and in combination. These elements form phosphors, which emit luminescence and are essential for many types of displays, including ray tubes and flat panels. This applies across devices as small as smartphone screens and as large as stadium scoreboards. Many REEs are also necessary in LED and fluorescent lighting. Among them, yttrium, europium, and terbium are used to create the red, green, and blue phosphors common in light bulbs, panels, and televisions. The glass industry, in particular, is a major consumer of REEs, using them in glass polishing and to add colour and special optical properties. Lanthanum, for example, is used in the production of digital camera lenses, including those found in mobile phones, where it makes up as much as 50 percent of the lens material.
In industrial applications, REEs are used as catalysts, with lanthanum-based catalysts aiding in petroleum refinement and cerium-based catalysts used in automotive catalytic converters.
One of the fastest-growing uses of REEs is in magnets, particularly neodymium-iron-boron magnets, the strongest magnets available. These magnets are essential in applications where space and weight limitations are factors, such as in computer hard disks and optical disk drives. The spinning mechanism in a disk drive, for instance, achieves high stability due to rare-earth magnets. Conventional automotive subsystems also rely on these magnets in components like power steering, electric windows, power seats, and audio speakers.
In battery production, especially for hybrid electric vehicles, nickel-metal hydride batteries require lanthanum-based alloys for their anodes. Each electric vehicle battery of this type contains a significant amount of lanthanum, ranging from 10 to 15 kilograms per vehicle.
Finally, REEs like cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, and praseodymium are frequently used in steel production. These elements are added, often in the form of a mixed oxide known as mischmetal, to remove impurities and create specialised steel alloys.
Rare-earth elements are indispensable to both modern technology and essential industrial processes, underlining their importance in a wide variety of applications across multiple sectors.
Pensana plc (LON:PRE) explores and mines neodymium, praseodymium, and rare earth minerals. The Company’s flagship assets are the Saltend rare earth refinery project in the United Kingdom and Longonjo neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) Project in Angola.
