Introduction

Minerals, metals, and materials are essential for manufacturing products that are vital to the global economy, creating advanced technological innovations and raising the standards of our daily way of life. The advent of electricity, telephones, locomotives, internal combustion engines, the radio, television, air, and space travel are some of the cornerstones of modern society that were propelled into many day-to-day consumer products. While the discovery and mass production of iron (Fe), copper (Cu), aluminum (Al), and their alloys became the pillars of these underlying innovations, the readers of this book will realize that rare earth elements (REEs) have played a critical role in advancing the manufacturing of numerous commodity, energy, and defense products and their derivatives. These and other critical or advanced metals are needed to improve the functional features and unique characteristics of these components or devices. Now, we are well into the modern data-driven information age, having an abundance of Internet-connected devices that use components that are manufactured with specialty, critical, and/or engineered materials.