Rare Earth Minerals in Phones: List, Grams and Uses

A typical smartphone holds well under half a gram of rare earth metals, and most of that is neodymium in its tiny magnets. When University of Plymouth geologists blended and analysed one phone, they measured 160 mg of neodymium and 30 mg of praseodymium, next to 33 g of iron and 36 mg of gold (University of Plymouth via ScienceDaily). The other rare earths in phones, such as dysprosium, terbium, gadolinium, yttrium, europium, lanthanum and cerium, are present in milligrams or less, or are used in the factory rather than left in the handset.

This page lists those elements by name, says what each one does inside the phone, shows how much is there, and then follows the supply line back to the mines. It ends with a calculator that turns a stock of old phones into kilograms of recoverable magnet metal, which is the number recyclers, consultants and licence owners actually argue about.

What are rare earth metals?

Rare earth metals are a group of 17 elements: the 15 lanthanides, from lanthanum (atomic number 57) to lutetium (71), plus scandium and yttrium. Scandium and yttrium are counted in the group because they occur in the same ore deposits and behave in similar ways chemically (Wikipedia, Rare-earth element).

The name misleads. Most rare earths are not scarce in the crust. The United States Geological Survey lists cerium, the most common one, at about 66.5 parts per million in the crust, which is in the same range as copper (USGS Fact Sheet 2014-3078). The difficulty is that they rarely gather into ore rich enough to mine, and once mined they are hard to separate from one another because their chemistry is so alike.

Geologists split the group into two parts. The light rare earths (lanthanum to gadolinium in the USGS scheme) are more plentiful and include neodymium and praseodymium, the two that matter most for magnets. The heavy rare earths (terbium to lutetium, plus yttrium) are scarcer and dearer; dysprosium and terbium are the ones that phone and car magnets use.

A note on words. People search for “rare earth minerals in phones”, but the phone holds refined metals and compounds, not minerals. The minerals are the rocks they came from: bastnaesite at Mountain Pass in California, monazite in heavy-mineral sands, and ion-adsorption clays in southern China and Burma. A broader definition of each element is in our guide to what rare earth elements are.

List of rare earth metals in cell phones

The table below names each rare earth found in or used to make a smartphone, the part that relies on it, and roughly how much a handset carries. Amounts vary by model and year; the figures come from the two published teardown studies cited on this page.

Scandium, promethium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium have no meaningful role inside a handset. Erbium does sit in the fibre-optic amplifiers of the networks your phone connects to, but not in the phone itself.

Neodymium and praseodymium: the magnets

Every sound and buzz a phone makes passes through a magnet. The loudspeaker, the earpiece receiver and the vibration motor all use small NdFeB magnets, and so do the voice-coil actuators that move camera lenses to focus and steady the picture. Rare earth magnets are stronger for their weight and volume than any other magnet type, which is why a speaker can be a few millimetres thick (USGS).

Dysprosium and terbium: heat resistance

A plain NdFeB magnet loses strength as it warms. Adding a small amount of dysprosium or terbium raises the temperature at which it starts to weaken. Phone magnets run cooler than electric-car motors, so they need less of these heavy rare earths, but they are in the alloy, and they are the elements whose supply is tightest.

Yttrium, europium, terbium and cerium: light and colour

Older LCD screens were lit by backlights that used rare earth phosphors, materials that glow when energised: europium for red, terbium for green and yttrium compounds as the host crystal (USGS). Most flagship phones now use OLED screens, where each pixel makes its own light from organic compounds, so the rare earth content of the screen has fallen. White LEDs, used for the camera flash and in LCD phones, still use yttrium aluminium garnet tinted with cerium. The Norway teardown found yttrium in display modules, which fits that picture.

Cerium and lanthanum: glass

Cerium oxide polishes the cover glass and camera lenses to an optical finish, so it is a rare earth that a phone “uses” even though very little of it stays in the device. The USGS lists polishing among the main end uses of rare earths. Lanthanum is added to some high-quality lens glass.

How much rare earth is in one phone?

Two studies give a sense of scale. The Plymouth team found 160 mg of neodymium and 30 mg of praseodymium in a single blended phone, about 0.19 g of the magnet pair in a device weighing well over 100 g (University of Plymouth). They also worked out that making one phone needs 10 to 15 kg of mined ore when all its metals are counted.

Chart

Rare earth mix in phone parts

Share of rare earth mass in vibration units, displays and microphones, %

A 2026 Norwegian study took apart 15 phones made between 2008 and 2015 and analysed the vibration units, displays and microphones with ICP mass spectrometry, a laboratory method that measures elements down to tiny traces. Vibration units averaged 5,200 mg of neodymium per kilogram of component. Across the three parts, neodymium made up 76% of the rare earth mass, praseodymium 9%, yttrium 5% and gadolinium 4% (AZoM, summarising Bourgé et al., SSRN preprint). The authors note that rare earths are less than 0.2% of the critical raw material mass in a phone, which is why ordinary shredding and smelting tend to lose them.

Multiply by the market and the totals stay modest. IDC counted 1.26 billion smartphones shipped in 2025 (IDC via GSMArena). At about 0.19 g of neodymium plus praseodymium each, that is roughly 240 tonnes of the two metals a year, against world rare earth mine output of about 390,000 tonnes of rare earth oxide. Phones are a visible use of rare earths, not a large one; electric vehicles, wind turbines and industrial motors take far more magnet metal.

What metals are in phones besides rare earths?

People who search for rare earths in phones often want the wider list. Rare earths are a small slice of a phone’s metal. By weight the Plymouth phone was mostly iron (33 g), silicon (13 g) and chromium (7 g), with aluminium, copper and plastic making up much of the rest. The critical and precious metals it held included:

• Tungsten, about 900 mg, mainly in the weight of the vibration motor.
• Cobalt and molybdenum, about 70 mg; cobalt also sits in the lithium-ion battery cathode of many phones.
• Silver, about 90 mg, in solders and contacts.
• Gold, about 36 mg, plated on connectors and circuit boards.
• Copper in wiring and boards, lithium in the battery, tin in solder, tantalum in capacitors and indium in the touch layer of the screen.

The Plymouth team pointed out that, by concentration, a phone holds about 100 times more gold than ore geologists would call high grade. Grade means the amount of metal per tonne of rock, often written g/t (grams per tonne). That is the economic argument for recycling: a tonne of old phones is richer in several metals than a tonne of good ore. For the deposits these metals come from, see our overview of types of ore deposits and of pegmatite deposits, the source of much of the world’s tantalum and lithium.

Where the rare earths in your phone are mined

China mined an estimated 270,000 tonnes of rare earth oxide in 2025, about 69% of the world total of 390,000 tonnes, and it also holds the largest reserves, at 44 million tonnes (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026). The United States was the second-largest miner at about 51,000 tonnes, almost all bastnaesite from Mountain Pass, California, followed by Australia (29,000 tonnes) and Burma (22,000 tonnes). Thailand, Madagascar, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria and a few other countries produced smaller amounts.

Chart

Rare earth mine production by country, 2025

Thousand tonnes of rare earth oxide, selected countries, USGS estimate

Mining share understates China’s position. Separating the mixed concentrate into individual oxides, turning oxides into metal and making finished magnets are steps that China dominates even more than mining. That is why a phone assembled anywhere usually contains magnets made from Chinese-refined neodymium, whatever country the ore came from. The USGS notes that a significant amount of the rare earths the United States imports arrives already built into finished goods such as electronics.

For US deposits beyond Mountain Pass, our page on Wyoming rare earth deposits covers Bear Lodge and Halleck Creek, and the US mining map shows active mines by state.

▶ Seven environmental impacts of mining, explained in clay. · 2:31

China’s export controls and phone makers

In April 2025 China began requiring case-by-case export licences for seven medium and heavy rare earths: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium, along with their metals, oxides, alloys and magnet materials. Those rules are still in force (Mining Technology). In October 2025 Beijing announced a wider package that added five more elements and claimed control over products made abroad with Chinese technology. It then suspended that package for one year, until 10 November 2026, after the US-China meeting at the end of October 2025 (China Briefing, update of 7 November 2025).

Three of the seven controlled elements, dysprosium, terbium and gadolinium, are in phone magnets, and yttrium is in phone LEDs. The quantities per phone are tiny, but magnet makers buy by the tonne for every customer at once, so licence delays at the refinery reach phone makers through their magnet suppliers. Anyone tracking the phone supply chain should watch what happens when the suspension runs out in November.

Recycling rare earths from old phones

Old phones are a real stock of magnet metal, but a scattered one. The Norway study estimated that household drawers held more than 10 million unused phones by 2024, more than the 6.8 million in active use, with phones used for about four years and then stored for about six more. Even so, only about 15 kg of rare earths flowed in 2024 from those stored phones into the waste stream (AZoM). The practical lesson from that work is that magnets have to be taken out of vibration motors and speakers before shredding, or the rare earths end up lost in steel scrap or slag.

Phone makers are starting to pay for that step. In July 2025 MP Materials (NYSE: MP) announced a US$500 million long-term agreement to supply Apple with magnets made at its Fort Worth, Texas, plant from 100% recycled feedstock, processed on a new recycling line at Mountain Pass. Shipments are expected to start in 2027 and ramp up to support hundreds of millions of devices (MP Materials press release, 15 July 2025). Company facts here come from that release; this page does not rate any listed company. Not investment advice.

Recycling also creates paperwork. Buyers of recycled metal increasingly ask for proof of origin, which is the same problem that product traceability and carbon footprinting tools address in other supply chains; collection firms that run truck routes for e-waste use the same kind of fleet management software as any logistics business.

Rare earth prices and what a phone’s magnets are worth

Neodymium and praseodymium are priced together as NdPr oxide. The USGS average for NdPr oxide (99% minimum) was US$92 per kg in 2021, peaked at US$124 in 2022, fell to US$55 in 2024 and recovered to about US$69 in 2025 (USGS). Rare Earth Exchanges listed NdPr oxide at US$103 to 106 per kg in China and US$125 to 140 per kg outside China in its October 2026 table, updated 17 October 2026 (Rare Earth Exchanges). The gap between the two prices is itself a sign of the export-control tension.

Chart

NdPr oxide average price, 2021 to 2025

US$ per kg, 99% minimum

At those prices the magnet metal in one phone is worth only a few US cents. About 0.19 g of NdPr is 0.00019 kg; at US$105 per kg that is about 2 cents, before the cost of collecting, dismantling and refining. Rare earth recycling from phones pays only at scale, alongside the gold, copper and cobalt recovered from the same devices, or when a buyer such as a phone maker pays for recycled content. The calculator below lets you test that for any stock of devices.

What this means for mining licence owners and consultants

For a rare earth project, phones are a useful story but not the demand case. The demand case is magnets for motors, which is where USGS puts the leading global end use. Three practical points follow for people who own or assess rare earth ground:

1. Check which rare earths the deposit carries. A deposit rich in neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium is worth far more per tonne of oxide than one dominated by lanthanum and cerium, which sell for about US$1 to 2 per kg (USGS, 2025 averages).
2. Check the mineral, not only the grade. Bastnaesite, monazite and ion-adsorption clay need very different processing. Monazite also carries thorium, which brings radioactive-waste rules.
3. Check the route to a separator. Outside China, separation capacity is limited, so offtake (a contract with a buyer) and processing plans weigh as much as the resource.

Satellite imagery helps at the screening stage: multispectral data can map iron-oxide and clay alteration, outcrop, access roads and old workings across a licence before any field visit, and repeat images track ground disturbance once work starts.

▶ Remote sensing for mining in plain words: the six instrument families. · 2:01

Frequently asked questions

What rare earth minerals are in phones?

Phones contain refined rare earth metals rather than minerals. The main ones are neodymium and praseodymium in magnets, with smaller amounts of dysprosium, terbium and gadolinium in the same magnets, and yttrium, europium and cerium in LEDs and display parts. The source minerals are mainly bastnaesite, monazite and ion-adsorption clays.

How many rare earth elements are used in a smartphone?

Up to about nine of the 17 rare earths are used in making a smartphone, depending on the model. Neodymium and praseodymium are in nearly every phone; the others appear in trace amounts or only in some screens and lenses.

How much neodymium is in a phone?

One phone analysed by the University of Plymouth contained about 160 mg of neodymium, or 0.16 g. In a Norwegian study, neodymium made up 76% of the rare earth mass in the parts tested.

Which rare earth metal is most important in phones?

Neodymium. It is the main element in the NdFeB magnets in the speaker, earpiece, vibration motor and camera actuators.

Are rare earth metals really rare?

Not in the crust. Cerium is about as abundant as copper. They are called rare because they seldom form deposits rich enough to mine and are hard to separate from each other.

Where do the rare earths in phones come from?

Most are mined or refined in China, which produced about 69% of world rare earth mine output in 2025 according to the USGS. The United States, Australia and Burma are the next largest miners.

Can you recycle rare earths from old phones?

Yes, but only if the magnets are removed before shredding. MP Materials plans to supply Apple with magnets made from recycled feedstock from 2027.

How much is the rare earth in a phone worth?

Only a few US cents. At an NdPr oxide price of about US$105 per kg, the roughly 0.19 g of neodymium and praseodymium in one phone is worth about 2 cents before processing costs.

Do OLED screens use rare earths?

Much less than older LCD screens, which used europium, terbium and yttrium phosphors in their backlights. OLED pixels make their own light from organic materials.

What metals are in a phone apart from rare earths?

Mostly iron, aluminium, copper and silicon, with tungsten in the vibration motor, cobalt and lithium in the battery, tin and silver in solder, tantalum in capacitors, indium in the screen and gold on connectors.