“…Many factors, such as the selectivity and loading capacity of extractants, number of extraction, scrubbing, and stripping cycles, and back-extraction of the extracted metal, affect the efficiency of the extraction process, but in a simplified picture, it is the coordination affinity of the extractant towards metal ions that determines the extraction degree and separation of metal ions into different fractions [ 2 , 3 ]. Because the coordination affinity is dictated by the molecular structure of the extractant, a plethora of different organophosphorus extractants have been developed and investigated for the separation of REs by now [ 1 , 4 , 5 ]. Apart from solvent extraction, organophosphorus compounds have also been utilized in other separation methods to recover and separate REs.…”