5G Boosts Demand of Rare Earths

Rare earths have been widely used in electronics, petrochemicals, metallurgy, and many other fields. Scientists discover new uses of rare earth for every technological innovation, and the 5G era has come, innovative integration of a series of new technologies. So, what impact will the arrival of the 5G era have on rare earth materials?

Large amounts of 5G mobile phones are already on the market. The measurement and control devices, vibration motors, speakers, mobile phone screens, and lenses on mobile phones are all closely related to rare earths.

The mobile phone screen was originally a black and white screen and then developed into a monochrome screen, such as a blue screen. After the blue screen, it developed into our current smartphone, which restores the colors of our daily life with high pixels. Smartphone screens use rare earth elements, such as lanthanum, terbium, praseodymium, europium, etc., for color display. Because these rare-earth ions have a rich emission spectrum, they are used on mobile phone screens.

Mobile phone camera uses rare earth lanthanum glass, also known as lanthanide optical glass, which contains a lot of rare earth lanthanum oxide (La₂O₃) in its composition, which has the characteristics of high refractive index and low dispersion. It is used to make read-write lenses for optoelectronic products. The new high-quality optical glass material necessary for the imaging lens can effectively expand the field of view of the lens, improve the imaging quality of the instrument, and make the lens smaller and lighter.

Application of rare earth permanent magnets in mobile phones. China is the world's largest smart phone manufacturing center and the consumer market. Neodymium iron boron magnets are an indispensable high-end component of smart phones, mainly used in its electro-acoustic parts, imaging systems, and parts of measurement and control devices. Among them, the magnetic power slide uses a neodymium iron boron permanent magnet called "magnet king". The life of the slide cover can reach 300,000 times.

The magnetic coil is composed of rare earth elements praseodymium, gadolinium, and neodymium. There are also a series of rare earth elements, such as praseodymium, gadolinium, and neodymium alloys for microphones and loudspeakers, and neodymium, terbium, and dysprosium for vibration units. No action can be separated from rare earth permanent magnet materials. Action and control also required permanent magnet materials.

5G will change life far beyond the traditional Internet and mobile Internet. It will permeate every corner of social life. With the acceleration of the replacement of 5G mobile phones, the application of rare earths materials is bound to become more extensive.

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