(Rare Earth Elements Annual Production [1]Link opens in a new window)

Rare-earth metals, owing to their various properties, find applications in a wide range of industries. These applications include permanent magnets, metal alloys, phosphors, catalysts, polishing, and glass additives [2]Link opens in a new window.

Rare-earth permanent magnets are expected to be the prime growth market over the next five to ten years. The major rare-earth elements that are used in the permanent magnet application are neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium.These metals possess special properties, such as remanence, high coercivity, which keeps the permanent magnets from losing their magnetivity even after long periods. These magnets find major applications in the automotive market, and their demand is dependent on this market. The rare-earth permanent magnets find use in both conventiona automtive as well as hybrid vehicles. In fact, the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) market is expected to drive a stronger growth for rare-earth magnets in the near future as they use more rare-earth magnets per vehicle when compared to conventional automotive. Generally, a hybrid car contains 650 grams or 1,000 grams of neodymium [2]Link opens in a new window .

The application of rare-earth magnets in wind turbines is expected to be another major growth market over the long term. The latest offering of direct drive wind turbines, where the use of rare-earth magnets allows the gearbox to be removed from the turbine, has greatly decreased weight and maintenance issues [2]Link opens in a new window .

Along with the above applications, rare-earth magnets are widely used in major consumer and industrial electronic applications, such as smartphones, acoustic speakers, hard disk drives, due to their high performance to size ratio and high magnetic strength. The usage of rare-earth metals in permanent magnets is expected to grow by 12% to 14% in the next five to ten years [2]Link opens in a new window .

The overall rare-earth metals market is projected to grow from USD 5.3 billion in 2021 to USD 9.6 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 12.3% during the forecast period. The increasing use of rare-earth elements that are used in the permanent magnet application are likely to drive the rare-earth metals market. APAC is the fastest-growing market for rare-earth metals due to increase in production and consumption in China. Significant usage of permanent magnets offer a huge impetus to these advanced materials, are expected to drive the rare-earth metals market in the region [2]Link opens in a new window .

Rare Earth Elements Education Resources for Business and Economics

_{(Picture from Harvard International Review [3]Link opens in a new window)}

Here, we summuarized education resources for teaching Rare Earth Elements in the Chemistry course in the following examboards:

EDEXCEL

Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR)

International Baccalaureate (IB)