With the growing demand for rare metals and their high purity oxides that are indispensable in high-tech industries, interest in rare earths has grown exponentially.
The rare earths (TR) or rare earth elements (ETR) correspond to a total of fifteen chemical elements called lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium, totaling seventeen elements designated as rare earths. They are increasingly used in the field of high technology, especially in the industries related to energy, permanent magnets, hybrid and electric cars, wind turbines, fine electronics, trains and mobility, telecommunications, among others.
The importance of rare earths has increased significantly in the high-tech industry, mainly through permanent magnets, whose large-scale application began in 1960 with Sm-Co alloys. From 1980 onwards, Neodymium Iron-Boron (Nd2Fe14B) magnets, also called Neodymium magnets, began to be used on a large scale, being the main product of LabFab ITR.