The current sustainable development trends tightly connected with the meeting of climate agenda, growth in the electronics industry, and digital transformation have forced the global research and industrial community to focus on newer technologies based on application of rare metals and other related critical materials. The rare metals include five subgroups, namely light RMs (Be, Li, Rb, Cs), refractory metals (V, Zr, Hf, Nb, Mo, Ru, Rh, Hf, Ta, W, and Re), scattered metals (Ga, In, Tl, Ge, Se, and Te), significant group of rare earth metals (Sc, Y, and lanthanides), and radioactive metals (out of our consideration). Among RMs, the most significant rise of consumption over the last two decades was observed for rare earths and lithium, while consumption of refractory and scattered metals demonstrated more moderate increase. RMs are characterised by relatively low abundance in the earth’s crust but are of crucial role in a wide range of modern industrial applications such as mobile devices, wind turbines, robotics, electric vehicles, aerospace, hydrogen energy, catalysts, medical imaging, electronics, optics, photonics, energy efficient lighting, etc. The newer technologies based on the application of RMs should promote future well-being of society by driving the development of more sustainable, green, and clean energy sources, formation of healthier environment, and higher life standards. 

We all currently witness the growing consumption of RMs that triggers the development of more comprehensive and productive mining, beneficiating, metallurgical, chemical and materials processing technologies. At this point it is worth noting that mining and further processing of RM mineral resources requires intense consumption of traditional energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, pet coke, hydroelectric power, etc. Moreover, it is followed by environmental degradation (surface and ground waters, air, and soil), creating dust containing rare and radioactive metals (U, Th), other toxic metals and chemicals, greenhouse and some toxic gases emissions, etc. Serious concerns are also related to active and all-time growing usage of RM containing instruments, magnets, batteries, electronic parts, equipment, etc. amid lack of recycling (currently below 1%). As a result, mountains of e-waste rich of RMs are growing across the globe and have already led to environmental and health impacts in many countries including India, Russia, China, Australia, US, Brazil, and EU countries. In view of the above, the nowadays research activities should be focused on the development of truly environment-friendly technologies capable to secure RM supply by equally relaying on both primary (deposits, ocean bed sediments, etc.) and secondary resources (electronic and industrial waste). The latter may cover a substantial part of the demand for RMs. 

In this talk, we will outline a number of advanced technologies elaborated at our institute including chemical processing of RM minerals, obtaining of high-purity materials for electronics and photonics, high value-added products for energy conversion, and technologies for recycling of different types of industrial waste (e-waste, rare earth based magnets, Li-Ion batteries, etc.).