By Clint Cox
I am often asked for additional websites or resources that people can use to further understand the REEs. In light of this, I would like to include a few links to some sites and books that may be helpful as a starting base for additonal rare earth research. Some of the readers of this site may already be familar with these resources, so I apologize for the redundancy, but I hope to provide more resources in the future as well.
A good starting point is the US Geological Survey. Jim Hedrick has done some excellent work over his career at the USGS and his papers and charts are often quoted and used.
An excellent overview by Hedrick and Stephen B. Castor can be found in Industrial Minerals & Rocks: Commodities, Markets, and Uses, 7th Edition published in 2006 and edited by Jessica Elzea Kogel, Nikhil C. Trivedi, James M. Barker, Stanley T. Krukowsk.
I have recently recommended “A Lanthanide Lanthology” by Barry T. Kilbourn — this is published by Molycorp and comes in two parts — Part 1, A-L and Part 2, M-Z.
A nice, quick read with good-looking pictures is The Lanthanides by Richard Beatty. This a very short, basic book, but it is easily accessible — which can be a big plus for this complex topic!
And finally, a tough to find book with a great history of rare earths section, The Rare Earth Elements by D.N. Trifonov (translated and published in 1963 by Pergamon Press). Quite a bit of it is outdated, but the history and basics are a great read (if you’re into rare earths, of course!).
That’s it for this week, but let me leave you with a picture. This is Über-instrumentation from the University of Manitoba — a SIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry):
