Shortages of Rare Earth Materials – a Problem for Photonics?

In laser technology and other fields of photonics, we also heavily depend on rare-earth materials – mostly not in the form of rare earth metals, but in non-metallic forms. In particular, various rare earth ions like Nd³⁺, Yb³⁺, Er³⁺ and Tm³⁺ are essential laser-active dopants in laser crystals and glasses as used e.g. in rare-earth-doped fibers. Furthermore, even the host materials often are rare earth materials – in particular, yttrium as a constituent of YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) and vanadates like YVO₄. Besides, rare earths like europium and cerium are contained in phosphors for lighting applications and displays, and cerium is used for optics polishing agents. Various modern optical clocks utilize rare earth ions as optical frequency standards.

The situation is reminiscent of that in electronics, where some other rare elements like gallium, indium, tantalum and niobium fulfill essential functions.

Based on these facts, serious concerns have been raised, fearing troubles for the whole photonics industry if we don't either secure more reliable REE sources or learn to replace rare earth metals with other elements, where the supply situation is less critical. For example, an OPN article of Marcius Extavour (see the reference above) in 2011 created that impression. He named recycling efforts as a possible path, and even raised the idea that rare-earth-free solid-state lasers might be needed in the future, and stated: “With myriad laser technologies available today, rare-earth-free solid-state lasers are certainly a practical alternative.” My opinion is that in most cases they would certainly not be a practical alternative, as that would imply e.g. that we essentially give up all well-working fiber lasers – but what could replace ytterbium-doped fiber lasers and erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, for example?

Given this doubt, you may now think that I consider the situation even more threatening than Extavour and other authors described it. That is not the case, however. In particular, I believe that Extavour and other authors did not sufficiently take into account that although photonics and in particular laser technology are indeed critically dependent on REE, only tiny amounts of them are needed in photonics – in particular, for most essential functions such as laser-active ions:

• As an example, consider an Yb-doped double-clad fiber as used in high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers; this contains only of the order of 5 μg ytterbium per meter of fiber for a typical doping concentration and core size. So you if you need 10 m for a laser, it is just 0.05 mg – close to nothing.
• We need substantially more when using a laser crystal with a rare-earth host medium. Let's consider a Nd:YAG crystal with dimensions of 10 mm × 2 mm × 2 mm and a concentration of 1 % wt (by Nd₂O₃). That contains around 1.6 mg of neodymium.
• About the worst case is a 150 mm long and 10 mm thick Nd:YAG rod for a lamp-pumped laser, which may contain several hundred milligrams of neodymium, and more importantly tens of grams of yttrium.
• A color TV screen may contain around 1 g of europium.
• Compare all that with neodymium content of an electric generator or motor in an electric car or hybrid engine car – this may easily be of the order of 1 kg. It's in the neodymium magnets, which could in principle be replaced with other materials, but at the cost of larger size and/or lower efficiency.
• Some wind energy generators contain even much more neodymium; only, there are not so many of them.

These examples demonstrate that in photonics and particularly in laser technology we use only tiny amounts of rare earth elements, which make up only a tiny fraction of the overall demand. And that changes the conclusions in essential ways. Even if China would suddenly stop exporting any rare earth elements, a small portion of the smaller REE production of other countries would suffice to meet the whole demand of photonics. As we a talking about high-value applications requiring tiny amounts, the price of a gram of REE essentially does not matter; we will always have enough for such purposes. The situation is entirely different for applications like magnets (e.g. NdFeB in neodymium magnets), where you (a) need much more and (b) cannot pay excessive prices.

In the longer term, we will also probably see new mines in various countries; only this takes some time, and efforts have started only recently, after a long time where the demand was simply not sufficiently high to amortize big investments.

How about recycling? This is certainly a wise thing to do, where large amounts of REE remain packed into compact devices. For example, it would be more than silly not to recycle the neodymium content of the generators and motors of cars, where you can hold with two hands a machine containing 1 kg or more. On the other hand, it is hard to see how recycling of rare earth elements from laser crystals or even active fibers could have a significant impact, except perhaps for the yttrium in the bigger laser crystals.

My conclusion is that there may well be trouble ahead with the supply of rare earth elements, but not for laser technology. The sectors which might be hit are those requiring large amounts – for example, catalysts and magnets. Some sectors of photonics may also be affected to a smaller extent – perhaps the display and lighting sector requiring phosphors. For polishing of optics, we may have to use alternatives to cerium, which however should not be a major problem.

As a side remark, there are substantial environmental concerns about the mining of rare earth materials. Again, however, it makes a big difference whether you need some milligrams for a device or kilogram amounts. Therefore, good ways to counteract serious pollution issues are not developing rare-earth-free lasers, but building better mines and possibly more efficiently using (and recycling) REE at those places where a lot is used.

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