Rare Earth Metals
You might first be like, “What are rare earth metals?” Well, rare earth metals are natural earth elements that are located in the earth’s crust and play an important part for industrial purposes. They are a very unique group of elements as they create better efficiency, durability, stability, and speed allowing technical jobs to be performed with less weight and reduced emissions. They are commonly used in electronics because of their high electrical conductivity. There are a total of 17 rare earth elements.
Due to the unique characteristics these elements hold, they are a valuable source to our society. Currently, China holds 95 percent of the supply. However, China has begun to reduce the amount of rare earth elements exports to other countries as they have started to face a shortage of these supplies. Before China runs out of supply and fails to supply the rest of the world with these elements, we need to find an alternative to replace these rare earth metals. There are a few solutions that are being debated over by a scientists. First, try extracting rare earth elements from the Pacific Ocean Mud, where there is a rich supply of these elements. Second, extract rare earth metals from asteroids. Asteroids contain an abundance of valuable resources including platinum, gold, iron, nickel, rare earth elements and water. Third, extract rare earth metals from phosphorites. The concentration and quantities of REEs in U.S. Phosphorites exceed those of all known resources. Lastly, replacing rare earth elements with tetrataenite. In the US and UK, research projects have been conducted in search for synthetic replacements for rare earth elements. "Our results are highly preliminary but we have found signatures of layering in the materials we have made." (Laura Lewis, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.) The layering of iron and nickel prove that the nanomaterial they are trying to make can become a super magnet. It is designed to be a synthetic form of tetrataenite, a rare magnetic extra-terrestrial iron-nickel alloy found in meteorites. Supermagnets are the strongest permanent magnets around and are vital for products ranging from headphones to wind turbines and hybrid vehicles.
We hope the best choice is made for the new replacement of lacking rare earth metals so that we could continue benefiting from the use of these unique elements.