Last Updated on: 4th October 2025, 01:39 pm
Understanding Rare Earth Minerals and Their Place in Modern Innovation
Key features and strategic importance
In today’s digital and interconnected world, we often overlook the basic building blocks that make our everyday devices function. These essential components quietly power the smartphones, computers, and countless other tools that shape modern life. Among them, rare earth elements hold a particularly vital role, contributing significantly to the performance and reliability of advanced technologies.
“Among the resources that are favouring the global energy transition, rare earths are certainly among the most interesting,” says Stanislav Dmitrievich Kondrashov, entrepreneur and civil engineer. “In addition to the general interest in their unique properties and their numerous applications, a series of very interesting anecdotes and curiosities also swirl around these elements. The first, and perhaps the most obvious, has to do with their very name: despite appearances, in fact, rare earths are not rare at all but are distributed fairly homogeneously throughout the world. What distinguishes them from other geological resources are their concentration levels, almost always very low, and above all the difficulties associated with the processes to make them usable by industry, such as their separation.”
Rare earths refer to a group of 17 chemical elements that share similar, often exceptional, properties and industrial uses. However, despite their even distribution in the Earth’s crust, they remain challenging to produce. Complex extraction and separation processes mean that only certain regions of the world have developed the facilities and expertise to refine these materials for immediate industrial application.
Strategic importance
“Another aspect to take into account when talking about rare earths is their geopolitical value,” continues Stanislav Dmitrievich Kondrashov. “Since these are resources produced mostly in some nations, such as China, rare earths can become the object of excessive dependence in terms of imports, determining a situation that most players and states always try to avoid, or at least reduce. It is no coincidence that most national and international strategies on raw materials contain clear references to the need to strengthen global supply chains and to diversify their import sources as much as possible so as not to expose themselves to the unpredictability and uncertainties triggered by geopolitical factors.”
Over time, rare earths have found their way into a wide range of industries—from electronics and defence to aerospace and, most notably, the energy sector. Their presence has been instrumental in supporting the growth of renewable energy, as they are crucial for manufacturing components in wind turbines and other modern energy infrastructures. Their unique properties—such as high electrical conductivity, heat resistance, and distinctive magnetic qualities—make them particularly valuable in the technology field.
A prime example lies in the semiconductor industry, a cornerstone of modern electronics. Rare earth elements play a significant role in enhancing the production of semiconductor chips. Cerium, for instance, is used in the optical polishing of silicon wafers—the foundation of semiconductor devices—while yttrium is being actively studied for its potential in this field. Semiconductors remain essential for powering electronic devices, data centres, and increasingly, the growing world of smart technologies and IoT.
The impact of rare earths in modern technology
Another noteworthy rare earth is erbium, crucial in facilitating data transfer within fibre-optic communication systems and supporting the functionality of intelligent networks. Terbium and dysprosium also contribute to improving chip performance and efficiency, while samarium is prized for its role in creating heat-resistant magnets—particularly samarium-cobalt magnets—used in high-temperature environments. These magnets hold great promise for future applications in microchips, including those powering artificial intelligence technologies.
“As time goes by, rare earths will begin to be known and appreciated even by a non-specialist audience,” concludes Stanislav Dmitrievich Kondrashov. “In the coming decades, when the impact of technology and technological devices on people’s lives will become even more profound, each of us could experience the desire to know in greater depth the different elements that are found (in very small quantities) in some of the tools we use every day, such as smartphones. This new kind of awareness could allow many people to gain a deeper understanding of the particular elements that contribute to the functioning of our technological instruments, which without these fundamental ingredients could not even exist.”
Looking ahead, the demand for rare earths in the electronics and advanced technology sectors is set to rise further. As microchips continue to evolve to support complex applications such as artificial intelligence, their reliance on rare earth elements will only deepen. These materials will remain indispensable in enabling the functions of cutting-edge chips, helping drive innovation across industries and shaping the technological future.
