Industrial applications of rare earth elements / Промышленное применение редкоземельных элементов

For the last twenty years conferences concerning rare earth materials have been held in the U.S.A. every 18 to 24 months. In general these conferences have dealt with the science of these materials, and only one or two sessions (~10% of the papers) were concerned with industrial and commercial aspects. This is also true for rare earth conferences held in other countries with one exception—the 1972 NATO Conference on Analysis and Applications of Rare Earth Materials, in which about half of the papers dealt with their uses. The rapid and continued growth of rare earth markets in the last two decades—10 to 15% per year—suggested that an exclusive conference would be of considerable interest not only to the worldwide rare earth community but also to many scientists, engineers, and technical business managers in other industries and technologies that may have an interest in, or possible future applications involving the rare earths. The symposium that formed the basis of this volume was devoted exclusively to industrial applications and commercial aspects of the rare earths. <...>