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Since covid-19 the demand for rare earth metals has increased exponentially.  So, it becomes necessary to know about them. Rare earth metals are the set of elements which have been given in the periodic table. The scientists usually refer to them as a group of 17 metals: 15 from Lanthanide series (lanthanum to lutetium) and other 2 from the main table named as Scandium and Yttrium. These elements are known as rare earths for their historical reasons.  In chemistry,  the term earth is used for the oxide powders which means that these metals were found in the form of oxide powders. Some scientists use the term rare earth only for Lanthanides, while some of them use it for a group of elements which are critical to nature as well as strategically important.  They said that rare earths not only contain Lanthanides but also contain Lithium, Cobalt , Germanium and Gallium. These elements used for making various types of important machines like Neodymium -Iron - Boron magnets are used for making electrical motors. Rare earth elements show magnetic as well as optical properties. Rare-earth elements are also used in catalysts, glass and ceramics, polishing powders, and other specialised material. Rare earth metals are generally found in a very small region like in a small rock or pits. The rare-earth producers start with solids that contain many elements together, and they must be separated at very high purity for applications. The problem is that neighbouring rare-earth ions behave similarly in solution, so the corresponding separation process is voluminous and energy-intensive. Second, a magnet maker doesn’t want any or all rare-elements but a specific oxide or metal, of a minimum purity. If a separator is short on one element or can’t deliver the required purity, the factory can't switch one element for another. In the oil industry, however, refineries can swap feedstocks and trade intermediates at scale. After mining, the first goal is to makesmaller, richer product. This begins with beneficiation: physically processing theore to separate more valuable mineralgrains from the less. Workers crush andgrind the ore to free the grains, then use flotation, magnets or gravity to separately collect different concentrates. The resulting concentrate will still contain many rare-earth elements together, plus other unwanted elements. Next is chemical cracking, where the producer breaks the rare-earth minerals apart using strong acids or bases or high temperature, converting them into a form that dissolves more easily.Third is leaching. The cracked material is mixed with a liquid, often an acidic solution, so the rare-earth atoms move into the liquid as ions. Then the producer separates the liquid from the remaining solids; this liquid contains a mixture of all rare-earth ions dissolved together plussome impurities. The hardest step is separating this mixture into individual rare-earth elements of high purity because these elements often have the same common charge (usually +3) and their ions are similar in size. In a simple chemical reaction, then, the ions behave in roughly the same way.Industry thus uses a technique called solvent extraction instead. The leach solution is repeatedly brought in contact with an organic solvent that doesn’t mix with water. The solvent contains molecules that prefer to bind with certain rare-earth ions slightly more than others. When the two liquids touch and separate,a little more of one rare-earth element moves into the solvent than its neighbours do. The difference is small, so producers run the liquids through many stages in a row, until the process separates the elements one by one and each element has been collected in a separate stream at high purity. Producers finally recover the elements from the liquid as a solid by precipitation: they add a compound that bonds with the rare-earth ions and becomes insoluble,falling out of the solution as a solid. The solids are filtered and washed, then heated to remove the water and some other substances, to finally yield arare-earth oxide. The elements are usually stored and transported as these oxides. If a manufacturer needs an element asa metal, the oxide is subjected to a reduction reaction in which the oxygen atoms react away from the oxide. Some rare-earth ores contain thorium or uranium, which can make some waste streams radioactive and harder to store safely.  Acids and bases can also create hazardous wastes if they aren’t captured, treated, and recycled properly. China’s dominance because rare-earth elements’ midstream refinement is so arduous, a country can have substantial deposits in the ground but still have to depend on other countries if it doesn’t have the means to convert the ore into rare-earth oxides. According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Mineral Commodity Summaries, the world has more than 90 million tonnes of rare-earth-oxide equivalent.Some notable national reserves include China (44 million tonnes, MT), Brazil (21MT), India (6.9 MT), Australia (5.7 MT),Russia (3.8 MT), Vietnam (3.5 MT), theU.S. (1.9 MT), and Greenland (1.5 MT). Note: these estimates exclude scandium. On December 23, Japan announced that in January and February 2026, it would excavate mud rich in rare-earth elements from 6 km underwater of Minamitori Island.The International Energy Agency hasestimated that China’s position isespecially strong in separation and refining, accounting for around 91% of global production, and around 94% of the production of sintered rare-earth permanent magnets. Since the new world is looking towards clean and green energy the role of rare earths becomes very crucial. But during the mining for small elements the resourceful countries like China get advantage while poorer countries get backlash.

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