Development of Rare Earth Industry Requires Tech and Innovation

In recent years, China has been continuously developing the rare earth industry rely on tech and innovation, as well as expanding the scale of application industries. The significant role of rare earth elements in various industries is self-evident.

When the rare earths were first discovered, due to the limitation of the level of purification and analysis techniques, people once believed that rare earths were few. It was later confirmed by scientific exploration that the sum of the crust abundance of rare earth elements was 0.016%, and the storage of cerium was almost close to copper. The storage capacity of thulium and lutetium is even higher than that of silver.

Due to its unique electronic structure, rare earth elements endow them with excellent optical, magnetic, and thermal properties. They can form new functional materials with different properties and a wide variety of other materials, and greatly improve the performance and quality of other products.

Rare earth materials, as an additive or auxiliary agent of core key new materials, have limited consumption in the application of high-end materials. The value of rare earth resources is mainly reflected by adding rare earth materials or applying rare earth material devices.

There are many rare earth reserves in the world, which provide a foundation for the application of rare earths. It interacts with other metals and has such a magical effect, which provides many directions for rare earth research, the application of end products reflects its value. The development of the rare earth industry has to rely on tech to make breakthroughs in terminal application innovation.

China is the country with the largest reserves of rare earth resources in the world, with complete minerals and rare earth elements, high grades, and reasonable distribution of mineral points. With our country's rare earth permanent magnet motors, domestic automobile exhaust catalysts and high-end rare-earth laser crystals, scintillation crystals, and high-performance rare-earth alloys, breakthroughs have been made in key technologies and new rare earth materials.

In recent years, although China has made great progress in the development of rare earth science and technology, it still has gaps with other countries in the world. Taking rare-earth permanent magnet materials as examples, most Chinese enterprises have mastered advanced production technologies such as sintered NdFeB magnet quick-setting ribbons and hydrogen quenching powder, and have the ability to produce mid-to-high-end products.

It is also improving year by year. However, compared with Japan, there is still a gap in the quality and product consistency of domestic permanent magnet materials. The degree of equipment automation needs to be improved.

China's rare earth industry should examine the development of the entire rare earth industry chain from the height of global integration. The upstream smelting and separation industry should carry out innovative breakthroughs in innovation, tech, equipment, and new processes with independent intellectual property rights for green and environmental protection.

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