Since the ISO decided to deal with rare-earth elements at the 298th Technical Committee (TC) in 2015, Korea has participated in four plenary meetings and proposed four standards as of June 2019. The status of ISO TC 298, the standards covered by the TC, and the standardization strategies of Korea are summarized. Korean delegations are actively engaged in WG2, which deals with recycling, proposing four standards for fostering the rare-earth recycling industry. However, the participation of domestic experts is still low compared with the increase in the number of working groups and the number of standards in TC 298. The aim of this article is to summarize the current status of ISO international standards related to rare-earth elements, to encourage relevant experts to participate in standardization, and to develop international standards that accurately reflect the realities of the industry.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are considered to be vital to modern industry due to their important roles in applications such as permanent magnets, automobile production, displays, and many more. The imbalance between demand and supply of REEs can be solved by recycling processes. Regarding the needs of industry and society, the International Organization for Standardization, Technical Committee 298 (ISO/TC298) Rare Earths has been recently launched for developing international standards on rare earth elements. In accordance with the suggestion of its constituents, it is tentatively working to develop the appropriate standards under five working groups (WG) on terms and definitions (WG1), element recycling (WG2), environmental stewardship (WG3), packaging, labelling, marking, transport, and storage (WG4), and testing analysis (WG5). The scope and structure of ISO/TC298 on the topic of rare earths is discussed in this document.

Cu-Fe alloys (CFAs) are much anticipated for use in electrical contacts, magnetic recorders, and sensors. The low cost of Fe has inspired the investigation of these alloys as possible replacements for high-cost Cu-Nb and Cu-Ag alloys. Here, alloys of Cu and Fe having compositions of Cu100-xFex (x = 10, 30, and 50 wt.%) are prepared by gas atomization and characterized microstructurally and structurally based on composition and powder size with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Grain sizes and Fe-rich particle sizes are measured and relationships among composition, powder size, and grain size are established. Same-sized powders of different compositions yield different microstructures, as do differently sized powders of equal composition. No atomic-level alloying is observed in the CFAs under the experimental conditions.