Rare Earth Elements Uses in Everyday Objects, Defense, and Medicine (Pt. 1)

arjunkapur

July 17, 2025

As you’re reading this, rare earth elements are working overtime all around you. They’re lighting up your screens, keeping your phone vibrating in your pocket, and helping wind turbines spin silently on distant hills. They’re in your car, your computer, your medical devices, and even in the satellites beaming data down from space. Simply, they are everywhere and help keep our world functional by today’s standards.

Let’s start with what everyone talks about: the clean energy connection. Whenever you see a wind turbine turning in the breeze, you are watching neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium in action. Each of these elements generates an extremely powerful magnetic field that can efficiently produce electricity, even when wind is barely present.

The same story is seen in electric cars. Before 2024, the acceleration of a Tesla depended on rare earth magnets that are so powerful, they’ve revolutionized what electric motors could do at the time. Although now Tesla has moved on from the usage of these, during the time, they were very transformative. Many Teslas on the road still use REEs.

Now, an even more everyday object, the smartphone. The display, which can show the perfect blends and opacities of reds, blues, and whites, is only possible with europium and terbium painting with light. Even the tiny buzzes you feel when you get a text are powered by REEs. Specifically, Neodymium magnets are significantly scaled down to extremely small sizes to produce these buzzes. Finally, even the speakers, which are able to produce remarkable sounds are powered by REEs. As your laptop, tablet, or even smart watch gets smaller, faster, and more powerful, year after year, a big reason is REEs. They are simply everywhere. Generally, silicon gets much of the credit for these transformation, however, it is really REEs making it all possible.

Defense

If you have gotten the chance to catch the news around this subject lately, you have probably come across the dilemma surrounding China and the United States. A large part of that is REEs usage in defense and national security. Here they are absolutely critical, which evidently will be a big deal to 2 of the largest powers in the world.

Every precision-guided missile, every fighter jet, every military satellite depends on rare earth elements. Dysprosium and samarium create magnets that can withstand the extreme heat of jet engines. Radar systems that can track threats hundreds of miles away? They need rare earths to function. GPS systems that guide everything from cruise missiles to pizza deliveries? REEs again.

For years, the Pentagon has quietly been sounding the alarms about this. It’s one thing to depend on foreign countries for oil or manufacturing, but a completely other thing to depend on them for the materials that make your weapons work. This is why REE supply chains have become a top nation security priority, right up there with cybersecurity and nuclear threats.

Source: The Army

Medicine

Whenever you walk into a hospital, you are surrounded by REEs. Nearly every machine in the building will be in some capacity powered by these elements. For example, the MRI machine that allows doctors to see inside your body and has transformed medicine, uses gadolinium as a conrast agent. The contrast agent’s role is to enhance visibility of internal organs, blood vessels, and tissues on MRI images. Without this agent, it would make doctor’s job of spotting problems early very difficult.

Again, surgical lasers which are able to operate with outstanding precision are often powered by REEs that generate focused beams of light. Many cancer treatments, heart procedures, and eye surguries are dependant on technologies that wouldn’t exist without REEs.

This field is always expanding as well. Right now, researchers are developing new treatments that use REE nanoparticles to directly target cancer cells, producing potentially revolutionary measures to fighting cancer.

Tune in next month as we continue to discuss their uses, with a focus on economics and technology.