The hottest rare earth metals and alloys

Rare earth metals and alloys

rare earth metals are the rising stars of metals. As a new functional material, they have received extensive attention since the early 1970s. Since the 1980s, they have entered the stage of industrial application and development. The speed of their research and development and market development is faster than the issuance of third-party testing reports, which has no precedent in the history of metal materials. Rare earth metals were soon used to make flints, knives, special steel, nodular cast iron, high-quality aluminum alloys, and a series of products have been formed. Nowadays, rare earth metals are used to make hydrogen storage and permanent magnet materials

as a hydrogen storage material, rare earth metal alloys act as hydrogen carriers, and hydrogen is stored in the gap between metal atoms. This method can obtain a storage density higher than the density of liquid hydrogen, and the use process is also very safe. It is a direction to solve the future energy problem of automobiles. Ni MH battery made of rare earth alloy has the characteristics of high capacity, long life, fast charge and discharge, safe use, no pollution and so on, which is called "green battery". Batteries are used in almost all electronic products (such as mobile phones, radio recorders, computers, cameras, game consoles, etc.) and also as power in electric vehicles and spacecraft

on the other hand, the permanent magnet materials made of rare earth alloys have strong permanent magnetic properties, and can be widely used in watches, cameras, tape recorders, CD players, video recorders, video cameras, etc. from small to large computers, automobiles, generators, medical devices, suspended trains, etc. The volume of electronic or electrical products made of this material can be greatly reduced, just as semiconductors replace electronic tubes to reduce the main work volume in 2017, which is particularly valuable in aerospace and aerospace development

as mentioned above, compared with poly4 fluoroethylene, the properties of rare earth metals are unchanged. Rare earth metals have important application value in many fields, such as machinery, metallurgy, power, electronics, transportation, communications, home appliances, medical treatment, national defense and so on, and their prospects are extremely broad. Therefore, countries all over the world regard rare earth metals as a major high-tech project, and invest a lot of financial and material resources to develop new products of rare earth metals

China is a large country of rare earth resources, with rare earth reserves accounting for more than 80% of the world's reserves, and has great advantages in the competition of developing rare earth metal products. However, the rare earth products that can be produced in China are very single, almost all of which are disposable products, namely rare earth oxides, chlorides, carbonates, nitrates and metal elements. However, alloy rare earth metal products that can be directly used to make battery electrodes, hydrogen storage materials and permanent magnets, especially high-quality powder products, cannot be produced. Because the alternating experiment box needs to be equipped with automatic curve recording device and program controller, the product quality is not up to standard. At present, China's rare earth metal market in the world is very small, and we can't get rid of the situation of exporting rare earth metals to foreign countries, and then buying rare earth alloy materials or products from foreign countries. Actively developing rare earth metal products can save a lot of foreign exchange, and at the same time, it can also open up the international market for export and earn foreign exchange

market situation

it is estimated that the world market will demand 2billion nickel hydrogen batteries by 2005, and 20000 tons of hydrogen storage alloy will be required annually, according to the news from the recent seminar on the development strategy of rare earth applications in China. Rare earth hydrogen storage alloy electrode material is considered to be the most ideal hydrogen storage material because of its easy activation, flat charging curve and excellent anti poisoning performance. At present, the annual production capacity of Ni MH batteries in China has reached 160million, which still lags behind international high-quality products in performance. More than 90% of rare earth permanent magnet materials are used in high-tech fields such as voice coil motors, new motors, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, office automation equipment and so on. The sales volume of personal computers will maintain an annual growth of 20% in western countries, but it will be faster in China. Therefore, the application of rare earth metals will become a major high-tech industry with rapid development in the new century, and several "ten billion yuan" projects are expected to appear in the next 10-20 years. (end)