Science and Technology › Materials and nanotechnology
Critical minerals and rare earths
Critical minerals and rare earths: which minerals count as critical and why their supply is at risk, mining and auctions, refining and magnets, assets abroad, recovery from waste, and stockpiles. Prelims has asked about rare earths and the National Critical Mineral Mission, lithium in Chile, and monazite.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2025: rare earths in flat screens, and their phosphorescence
Showing 1 of 8 subjects, those that changed from 16 to 31 July 2026.Show all
Electromagnets in place of rare earth magnets
Copy link to Electromagnets in place of rare earth magnetsPrelims and Mains
An electromagnet is copper coil on an iron core, and replacing rare earth permanent magnets with it in electric vehicle motors trades dependence on imported rare earths for losses in efficiency, starting torque and top speed.
What changed
23 Jul 2026New subjectalso in news
- A startup's "virtual magnet" is an electromagnet, copper coils on an iron core. Large generators have used these for a century, but efficiency, starting torque and top speed have kept them out of electric vehicle motors.
Also filed elsewhere
- Deep sea minerals · on Ocean, polar and earth science missions
Two kinds of deposit are worth going to the ocean floor for, and they form in entirely different places.
- India's deep sea mining programme · on Ocean, polar and earth science missions
The Ministry of Earth Sciences and the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) have invited private industry into deep sea mining, at an outreach workshop held to secure the country's critical mineral supply.
- Urban mining · on E-waste, battery and hazardous waste
A discarded computer holds metals and critical minerals in concentrations a miner would be pleased with, and they have already been dug out of the ground once.