This story is originally Appear Barrier It is part of Climate cooperation.
In the summer of 2023, Vasilius Tsianus, Vice President of Corporate Development at New performance materialsI started obtaining calls from government officials on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Inside the world of industrial material manufacturing, NEO is famous for making rare ground magnets, and is used in everything from home appliances to electric cars. But these calls were not around the rare land. They were about a largely rare thing: the metal gallium.
Recycling new a A few tens of tons From the high gallium per year, most of them are scrap of the manufacture of semiconductor chips, at a factory in Ontario, Canada. In North America, it is the only mineral industrial product, which is not used in chips, but also clean energy technologies and military equipment.
China, the world’s leading producer, was just Declare New export controls on Galium, Apparently in response to this For reports that the United States government was studying restrictions on selling semiconductor chips to China.
Suddenly, people wanted to speak to New. “We have spoken to almost everyone,” Tsianus told Grist.
Since Tsianos began receiving these calls, tensions have escalated on the thirty -first element on the periodic table – as well as 32, germanium, as in a set of advanced technologies -. In December, China An explicit banned Exports of both minerals to the United States after the decision of the Biden administration More restrictions of chips exports.
Now, many companies operating in the United States and Canada are studying the expansion of rare mineral production to help meet American demand. While the Canadian critical metal producers may be invaded in new geopolitics, Trump must be passed by A threat to impose definitionsAmerican metal producers can see support from the new administration, which called for a priority to federal financing for critical metal projects in A. The executive order is the first day. Besides the United States and Canada, industrial observers say that the export ban in China is increasing worldwide interest In making critical metal supply chains is more diverse so that no one country has suffocation of vital materials for the future of clean energy and high technology.
“This last round of the export ban puts a lot of winds in the sails of the efforts of the critical mineral supply chain, not only in the United States but globally,” globally. ” Seaver Wang The Research Center, which focuses on technological solutions to environmental problems, said of a penetration institute, which focuses on technological solutions to environmental problems.
Galium and germanium are not exactly home names. But it is present in products that are indispensable for modern life-and a society free of fossil fuel. With its impressive electrical features, gallium is used in Semiconductor chips This makes its way to everything from mobile phones to power transformers in electric cars to LED lighting screens. The metal is also used in the manufacture of rare Earth magnets for electric cars and wind turbines, in the delicate solar cells of movies, and sometimes, in commercially common silicon photovoltaic cells, as it can help increase performance and expand their life.
