High-technology and environmental applications of the rare-earth elements (REE) have grown dramatically in diversity and importance over the past four decades. This book provides a scientific understanding of rare earth properties and uses, present and future. It also points the way to efficient recycle of the rare earths in end-of-use products and efficient use of rare earths in new products. Scientists and students will appreciate the book's approach to the availability, structure and properties of rare earths and how they have led to myriad critical uses, present and future. Experts should buy this book to get an integrated picture of production and use (present and future) of rare earths and the science behind this picture. This book will prove valuable to.non-scientists as well in order to get an integrated picture of production and use of rare earths in the 21st Century, and the science behind this picture. - Defines the chemical, physical and structural properties of rare earths. - Gives the reader a basic understanding of what rare earths can do for us. - Describes uses of each rare earth with chemical, physics, and structural explanations for the properties that underlie those uses. - Allows the reader to understand how rare earths behave and why they are used in present applications and will be used in future applications. - Explains to the reader where and how rare earths are found and produced and how they are best recycled to minimize environmental impact and energy and water consumption.

The Handbook of Rare Earth Elements focuses on the essential role of modern instrumental analytics in the recycling, purification and analysis of rare earth elements. Due to their numerous applications, e.g. in novel magnetic materials for computer hardware, mobile phones and displays, rare earth elements have become a strategic and valuable resource. The detailed knowledge of rare earth element contents at every step of their life cycle is of great importance. This reference work was compiled with contribution from an international team of expert authors from Academia and Industry to presend a comprehensive discussion on the state-of-the-art of rare earth element analysis for industrial and scientific purposes, recycling processes and purification of REEs from various sources. Written with Analytical Chemists, Inorganic Chemists, Spectroscopists as well as Industry Practitioners in mind, the Handbook of Rare Earth Elements is an indispensable reference for everyone working with rare earth elements.

"Rare Earth Frontiers is a timely text. As Klinger notes, rare earths are neither rare nor technically earths, but they are still widely believed to be both. Although her approach focuses on the human, or cultural, geography of rare earths mining, she does not ignore the geological occurrence of these mineral types, both on Earth and on the moon.... This volume is excellently organized, insightfully written, and extensively sourced."―Choice Drawing on ethnographic, archival, and interview data gathered in local languages and offering possible solutions to the problems it documents, this book examines the production of the rare earth frontier as a place, a concept, and a zone of contestation, sacrifice, and transformation. Rare Earth Frontiers is a work of human geography that serves to demystify the powerful elements that make possible the miniaturization of electronics, green energy and medical technologies, and essential telecommunications and defense systems. Julie Michelle Klinger draws attention to the fact that the rare earths we rely on most are as common as copper or lead, and this means the implications of their extraction are global. Klinger excavates the rich historical origins and ongoing ramifications of the quest to mine rare earths in ever more impossible places. Klinger writes about the devastating damage to lives and the environment caused by the exploitation of rare earths. She demonstrates in human terms how scarcity myths have been conscripted into diverse geopolitical campaigns that use rare earth mining as a pretext to capture spaces that have historically fallen beyond the grasp of centralized power. These include legally and logistically forbidding locations in the Amazon, Greenland, and Afghanistan, and on the Moon.

"Sponsored by the ACS Division of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology."

This book deals with the rare earth elements (REE), which are a series of 17 transition metals: scandium, yttrium and the lanthanide series of elements (lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium). They are relatively unknown to the wider public, despite their numerous applications and their critical role in many high-tech applications, such as high-temperature superconductors, phosphors (for energy-saving lamps, flat-screen monitors and flat-screen televisions), rechargeable batteries (household and automotive), very strong permanent magnets (used for instance in wind turbines and hard-disk drives), or even in a medical MRI application. This book describes the history of their discovery, the major REE ore minerals and the major ore deposits that are presently being exploited (or are planned to be exploited in the very near future), the physical and chemical properties of REEs, the mineral processing of REE concentrates and their extractive metallurgy, the applications of these elements, their economic aspects and the influential economical role of China, and finally the recycling of the REE, which is an emerging field.

Corrosion inhibitors are an important method for minimizing corrosion; however traditional inhibitors such as chromates pose environmental problems. Rare earth metals provide an important, environmentally-friendly alternative. This book provides a comprehensive review of current research and examines how rare earth metals can be used to prevent corrosion and applied to protect metals in such industries as aerospace and construction. Chapter 1 begins by examining the important need to replace chromate, and then goes on to discuss the chemistry of the rare earth metals and their related compounds. Chapter 2 considers the techniques that can be used to identify corrosion inhibition mechanisms and to test the levels of protection offered to different metals by rare earth compounds. Subsequent chapters consider in more detail how rare earth elements can be used as corrosion inhibitors in different forms and for different metals. This includes discussion on the potential of rare earth elements for self-healing, tunable and multifunctional coatings. Finally, chapter 10 considers the cost and availability of the rare earths and the potential health and environmental risks associated with extracting them. - Provides a review of current research and examines how rare earth metals can be used to prevent corrosion and applied to protect metals in such industries as aerospace and construction - Includes discussion on the potential of rare earth elements for self-healing, tunable and multifunctional coatings - Considers the cost and availability of the rare earths and the potential health and environmental risks associated with extracting them

This work introduces into the chemistry, materials science and technology of Rare Earth Elements. The chapters by experienced lecturers describe comprehensively the recent studies of their characteristics, properties and applications in functional materials. Due to the broad range of covered topics as hydrogen storage materials, LEDs or permanent magnets this work gives an up-to-date presentation of this fascinating research.

This is the first book of its kind to focus on the geochemistry of the lanthanide series elements in groundwater/aquifer environments. The contributors are leading researchers in the study of low-temperature geochemistry of rare earth elements. Individual chapters address analytical techniques, water-rock interactions, aqueous complexation, and the reactions and processes that influence these heavy metals along groundwater flow paths.

Aimed at researchers and graduate students, this book provides up-to-date information about the electronic interactions that impact the optical properties of rare earth ions in solids. Its goal is to establish a connection between fundamental principles and the materials properties of rare-earth activated luminescent and laser optical materials. The theoretical survey and introduction to spectroscopic properties covers electronic energy level structure, intensities of optical transitions, ion-phonon interactions, line broadening, and energy transfer and up-conversion. An important aspect of the book lies in its deep and detailed discussions of materials properties and the potential of new applications such as optical storage, information processing, nanophotonics, and molecular probes that have been identified in recent experimental studies. This volume will be a valuable reference book on advanced topics of rare earth spectroscopy and materials science.

The growth and development witnessed today in modern science, engineering, and technology owes a heavy debt to the rare, refractory, and reactive metals group, of which niobium is a member. Extractive Metallurgy of Niobium presents a vivid account of the metal through its comprehensive discussions of properties and applications, resources and resource processing, chemical processing and compound preparation, metal extraction, and refining and consolidation. Typical flow sheets adopted in some leading niobium-producing countries for the beneficiation of various niobium sources are presented, and various chemical processes for producing pure forms of niobium intermediates such as chloride, fluoride, and oxide are discussed. The book also explains how to liberate the metal from its intermediates and describes the physico-chemical principles involved. It is an excellent reference for chemical metallurgists, hydrometallurgists, extraction and process metallurgists, and minerals processors. It is also valuable to a wide variety of scientists, engineers, technologists, and students interested in the topic.