Rare Earths: Indispensable to Modern Tech, A Geopolitical Quandary

Recently, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington to finalize a deal on rare earths with US President Donald Trump, which did not go according to plan.

- HRITHIK KIRAN BAGADE

Apart from several factors, this matter also threw light on rare earths and their relevance.

Rare Earth Elements (REEs) are a group of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table, which include 15 lanthanides along with scandium and yttrium. These elements are essential for the development of various high-tech products and technologies due to their unique magnetic, catalytic, and optical properties. Despite the name 'rare', rare earth elements are not particularly scarce in the Earth's crust, but they are rarely found in concentrated forms that are economically viable to mine.

The 15 lanthanides, which are part of the rare earths family, include elements like lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), neodymium (Nd), and dysprosium (Dy), which are typically grouped into two categories based on their chemical properties:

Light Rare Earth Elements (LREEs): These include elements like lanthanum, cerium, and praseodymium, which are generally found in larger quantities in ores and are easier to extract