Structure of Answer:

Introduction: what is rare earth element ( 30-40 words) Write a note on its uses ( 40-50 words)

Distribution and production of rare earth ( 60-70 words)

Content:

Rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earth elements since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties. While named rare earths, they are in fact not that rare and are relatively abundant in the Earth's crust. What is unusual is to find them in quantities significant enough to support economic mineral development.

• Rare earth elements (REE) do not occur as free metals in the earth’s crust, such that all naturally occurring minerals consist of mixtures of various REE and non-metals.
• Bastnaesite, monazite and xenotime are the three most economically significant minerals of the more than 200 minerals known to contain essential or significant REE
• Bastnaesite and monazite are principal sources of the light REE’s which account for about 95% of the REE currently utilised.

• Monazite is also the principal ore of thorium, containing up to 30% Th, which together with smaller quantities of U imparts radioactive properties
• Xenotime and minerals such as allanite are common sources of the heavy REE and yttrium.

Applications of Rare Earths

• Rare earth elements are used in many modern technological devices, including superconductors, samarium-cobalt and neodymium-iron-boron high-flux rare-earth magnets, electronic polishers, refining catalysts and hybrid car components.
• Phosphorus with rare earth dopants are also widely used in cathode ray tube technology such as television The earliest color television CRTs had a poor-quality red; europium as a phosphor dopant made good red phosphors possible.
• Yttrium iron garnet (YIG) spheres have been useful as tunable microwave resonators
• Rare earth oxides are mixed with Tungsten to improve its high temperature properties for welding, replacing thorium which was mildly hazardous to work with
• Many of these are essential ingredients in mobile phones, video game machines, computers, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment's and green Tiny amounts of rare earths dysprosium or terbium might soon be used in electric cars as these let batteries work at high temperatures.

Global Production of Rare Earths

• Significant amounts of rare earth elements are produced in only a few countries
• China is the dominant producer of rare earth elements and is believed to be responsible for over 97% of the world mine production on a rare earth oxide equivalent basis.

• Other countries with notable production in 2009 were: India, Brazil, Kyrgyzstan and Minor production may have occurred in Indonesia, Commonwealth of Independent States, Nigeria, North Korea and Vietnam.