Research on the technology evolution of global rare earth new materials and direction choice of China's rare earth industrial chain extension

The rare earth new materials are indispensable for maintaining national security, supporting the development of high-tech industries and realizing the “double carbon” strategy. Now, China is facing the serious challenge of reconstructing the rare earth industry and supply chain by Western countries. How to promote the high-quality development of the rare earth new materials industry and rationally choose the extension direction of rare earth new materials is a major problem that needs to be solved in China. This paper analyzed the technological evolution of the global rare earth new materials industry from various perspectives, such as time trends of patent applications, new material categories, national (regional) distribution, and hot technology fields. On this basis, the key direction of China's rare earth industry chain extension was judged and technology evolution analyzed. It is found that the number of global rare earth new material patent families generally shows a rapid increase in the evolutionary trend, experiencing a technology-led evolutionary pattern from the U.S. to Japan and now China. The numbers of global rare earth new material patent families listed in descending order are rare earth catalytic materials, rare earth permanent magnet materials, rare earth optical functional materials, rare earth alloys, rare earth polishing materials and rare earth hydrogen storage materials. China and Japan account for half of the global patent families of rare earth new materials. The numbers of global patent families of rare earth permanent magnet motors have a steady growth trend, and China has become the world's largest number of rare earth permanent magnet motor patents, The rare earth permanent magnet motor as the key direction of rare earth industry chain extension is economically feasible and technically feasible. This study can provide a decision reference for helping China to correctly grasp the future development trend of rare earth new materials, choosing the key direction of industrial chain extension reasonably, optimizing and adjusting the industrial chain structure, and enhancing the international competitiveness and discourse power of the whole rare earth industrial chain.