Rare Earths Vs Semiconductors, Which Is More Vital?

The rare earths market has been in comparison with semiconductors in recent years.  However, rare earths and semiconductors seem to be incomparable in terms of industrial scale. Petroleum is the 'blood' of industry, the chip is the 'food' of industry, and the rare earth is the 'vitamin' of industry. Globally, the Middle East controls the petroleum, the United States controls the chip, and China occupies most of the 'vitamin' market.

Rare earth metals are the general term for the 17 elements of scandium, yttrium, and lanthanides in group IIIB of the periodic table. It has been 227 years since the first rare earth element was discovered. The reason why it was named 'rare earth' was the effect of ancient Greek philosophy. It was believed that everything in the world is composed of air, water, fire and soil. All oxides are called "earth", and this kind of metal is very rare, so it is called rare earth.

While with the development of science, people realized the rare earth elements (REEs) are not rare. For example, the reserves of cerium in the earth's crust are similar to copper. The rarest REE is thulium, and the reserves are 200 times of gold.

Rare earths are often used as polishing materials. Cerium oxide is the most commonly applied material for polishing powders. High cerium polishing powders are mainly used for long-term polishing of hard glass such as quartz and optical lenses. Cerium polishing powders are used for medium precision optical lenses. Low cerium polishing powder is mainly used for polishing flat panels, picture tube glass, etc.

Another major use of REEs is in lasers. Of which about 290 of the 320 known laser crystals are doped with rare earths as activating ions, such as neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet crystals, which can be used as pulse lasers with high repetition rates, and lithium yttrium fluoride can be used as activating ions. In semiconductor manufacturing, lasers play an important role, whether it is laser cutting or the light source of lithography machines.

The terbium element can be used as a magneto-optical storage material and has been used on a large scale. Magneto-optical discs made of this material can increase the storage capacity by 10 to 15 times. In telecommunication networks that need to amplify optical signals with a wavelength of 1550 nm.

Per relevant data, in 2018, the output value of China's rare earth (0.97, -0.10, -9.35%) industry chain was about 90 billion yuan. In 2017, the global semiconductor output value was 476.7 billion U.S. dollars. The output value of REEs and semiconductors is tiny compared to that of semiconductors. Technically, the technical threshold of rare earths and the upstream and downstream involved are far behind semiconductor industry.

The core threshold of rare earths is refining capacity. China ranks first in the world. But if other countries want to surpass China in technology, they may spend less money and time than invest in the semiconductor industry.

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