The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Critical Minerals Alliances - August 7, 2025
Gallium is critical to computer chips that go into everything from household appliances to the most powerful supercomputers.
Australian scientists are leveraging gallium's 86.5 F melting point and other unique properties to create liquid-metal super-catalysts for scrubbing emissions and producing chemicals.
Gallium is critical to advanced U.S. defense systems.
Gallium is typically recovered as a byproduct of aluminum and zinc refining.
Rio Tinto is developing a North American supply of gallium at its alumina refinery in Quebec.
Gallium, a semiconductor that enables some of the world's most advanced technologies, has emerged as a strategic power metal at the frontlines of an escalating tech trade war between the United States and China. While the U.S. holds the advantage when it comes to developing and producing advanced computer chips needed for artificial intelligence and supercomputing, China is increasingly leveraging its domination over global production of gallium and other tech metals as a powerful bargaining chip.
The tech and trade war between the world's economic superpowers began when Beijing tightened its grip on the exports of gallium and germanium – a pair of metals indispensable to chipmaking – in retaliation for the Biden administration's export restrictions aimed at curbing China's access to high-end chip technology.
Over the ensuing two years, the tit-for-tat between the U.S. and China has escalated. Following new American chip export bans, Beijing imposed a complete embargo on the exports of gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials to the U.S.
China's Ministry of Commerce warned that anyone caught shipping any of these critical materials directly or indirectly to U.S. enterprises "will be held accountable according to law."
Considering that 99% of the world's gallium is produced in China, and the U.S. is 100% reliant on imports for the tech metal, the implications of this embargo are as sweeping as they are strategic.
By limiting America's computer chipmaking capacity, the gallium export ban could deal a $3 billion blow to the U.S. economy, according to a study completed by the U.S. Geological Survey in late 2024.
"Losing access to critical minerals that make up a fraction of the value of products like semiconductors and LEDs can add up to billions of dollars in losses across the economy," said Nedal Nassar, a mineral supply chain analyst at USGS.
While it is expected that the U.S. will develop alternative gallium sources, the USGS foresees substantial economic impacts during the transition.
"Our model projects the impacts in the near term, and in many cases, developing new supply sources or substitute materials takes far longer," Nassar added.
The value of gallium to the U.S. economy lies in the unmatched semiconductive properties it delivers to advanced technologies and its unique characteristics, which scientists are still trying to understand.
Gallium's unusual characteristics begin with its 85.6-degree Fahrenheit melting point, which means it is solid at normal room temperatures but will melt into a mirror-like pool of liquid metal in the palm of your hand.
However, the curiously low melting point is not why gallium is so critical to America's tech sector and economy – at least not yet. Instead, the metal's criticality lies in its superiority as a semiconductor for high-tech applications.
According to the USGS 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries, roughly 79% of gallium consumed in the U.S. goes into gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors needed for AI, robotics, next-generation smartphones, telecommunication networks, satellite communications, and military radar.
Another 20% of these gallium-based semiconductors are used for optoelectronic applications such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), thin-film solar cells, and quantum dots.
"The development of gallium arsenide as a direct band-gap semiconductor in the 1960s led to what are now some of the most well-known uses of gallium – in feature-rich, application-intensive, third- and fourth-generation smartphones and in data-centric networks," the USGS penned in a report on critical minerals and metals.
While GaAs is the older and more widely used gallium-based semiconductor, GaN is rising in popularity due to its superior power density and heat resistance.
These properties make GaN the semiconductor of choice for military hardware, satellites, 5G networks, high-end consumer electronics, and other applications where high performance and efficiency are critical.
"Gallium nitride is more efficient, more thermally stable, and certainly more capable for use in power devices that demand more load or higher frequencies at higher temperatures," said Arrow Electronics, a global technologies provider. "GaN material is future-proof for the semiconductor world and will lead to more readily available small, high-frequency products."
Australian scientists are leveraging gallium's 86.5 F melting point and other unique properties to create liquid-metal super-catalysts for scrubbing emissions and producing chemicals.
As vital as gallium-based semiconductors are to the most advanced 21st-century technologies, this near-room-temperature liquid metal has another potentially game-changing characteristic that could reshape the future of both chemical production and green technology.
This future-leaning use for gallium is being explored by Australian scientists who discovered that the low-melting-point tech metal has the uncanny ability to transform normal industrial catalysts into liquid metal super-catalysts for producing plastics, polymers, electronic components, hydrogen, and a wide range of advanced materials.
"This advancement is set to transform chemical manufacturing, delivering faster, safer and more sustainable production across industries, from pharmaceuticals to advanced materials," said Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, who heads the University of Sydney's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Working alongside fellow Australian researchers from Monash University, RMIT University, and the University of Sydney, Kalantar-Zadeh has been at the forefront of developing liquid-metal catalysts that leverage gallium's propensity to enhance the catalytic properties of other metals such as iridium, nickel, platinum, palladium, and rhodium.
These catalytic metals are the key ingredients in processes that:
• Scrub harmful emissions from automotive and industrial exhaust.
• Produce consumer goods such as cheese, laundry detergents, plastics, and pharmaceuticals.
• Split clean-burning hydrogen off of water or fossil fuels.
Over the past five years, Kalantar-Zadeh and fellow researchers have shown that minute quantities of catalysts such as nano-sized silver rods, nickel, palladium, and platinum added to gallium create liquid-metal super-catalysts that are thousands of times more effective than the catalytic metals in their pure form.
A palladium-gallium liquid catalyst unveiled by the Australian scientists earlier this year demonstrated the potential to make the chemical manufacturing process faster, safer, and more sustainable than ever before.
"This new catalyst takes advantage of the unique fluid-like behavior of palladium atoms in a liquid gallium mixture, making it exceptionally effective at speeding up reactions –accelerating them up to 100,000 times faster than the best existing palladium catalysts," said Arifur Rahim, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Monash who has been working with Kalantar-Zadeh on liquid catalysts for several years.
The orders of magnitude acceleration of catalytic reactions is due to gallium's not yet fully understood ability to amplify the properties of even minuscule quantities of catalytic metals.
"The platinum is actually a little bit below the surface and it's activating the gallium atoms around it," Andrew Christofferson, an RMIT University researcher, said of a platinum-gallium catalyst created in 2022 for scrubbing CO2 from industrial emissions. "So, the magic is happening on the gallium under the influence of the platinum. But without the platinum there, it doesn't happen."
The liquidity of the gallium-platinum alloy offers yet another advantage – it is self-cleaning, much like a water fountain, which adds to its efficiency and longevity.
Considering that the most powerful naturally occurring catalytic metals – platinum, palladium, rhodium, and iridium – cost anywhere from $1,000 to $6,000 per ounce, gallium's ability to supercharge their catalytic properties and longevity could be a game-changer for both industry and the climate.
Gallium is critical to advanced U.S. defense systems.
Despite gallium's strategic importance to current and future-leaning technologies, the U.S. has, up to now, remained entirely reliant on foreign sources for this technology metal. Considering that China holds an almost total monopoly over global supply, this dependency has made the U.S. beholden to the communist nation for its supply.
It has become increasingly clear that China understands the strategic value of its gallium and is using it as leverage in the broader technologies and trade war with the U.S.
At the same time, policymakers in the White House and on Capitol Hill are realizing that their visions of the U.S. leading the world when it comes to computer chipmaking are at risk until American manufacturers have secure supplies of the gallium, germanium, and other basic building blocks of 21st-century technologies.
These risks were underscored by the "Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production" executive order signed by President Trump in March.
"Our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers' mineral production," the executive order states.
Even before the U.S. minerals order was signed, the Pentagon and other federal agencies were scouring the U.S. and its allies for more secure sources of gallium.
"The (Defense) Department is proactively taking steps using Defense Production Act Title III authorities to increase domestic mining and processing of critical materials for the microelectronics and space supply chain, including gallium and germanium," a Pentagon spokesperson said following China's 2023 tech metals export restrictions.
Rio Tinto is developing a North American supply of gallium at its alumina refinery in Quebec.
Mining, refining, and recycling companies are also proactively establishing secure and reliable supplies of gallium in North America.
Immediately following China's gallium export bans, global mining giant Rio Tinto announced that it is investigating the potential of recovering this high-tech metal needed for computer chip manufacturing from its aluminum operations in Quebec.
"This new research and development project is destined to help strengthen the North American supply chain for critical and strategic minerals," said Rio Tinto Aluminium Chief Executive Jérôme Pécresse.
It is estimated that Rio Tinto's Vaudreuil alumina refinery in Quebec has the potential to produce 40 metric tons of gallium per year, or nearly 10% of the world's current supply.
While aluminum ores such as those refined at Vaudreuil are often enriched with gallium, the process to recover the tech metal can be challenging and often not worth the investment – especially when competing with China for a metal with a relatively small market.
China's export ban at a time when the tech sector needs increasing quantities of gallium for advanced electronics has shifted the economics of recovering gallium as an aluminum byproduct.
As the first step in realizing the gallium potential at its aluminum operation in Quebec, Rio Tinto turned to New York-based Indium Corp.'s expertise in critical materials refining.
In May, Indium Corp. announced that it had successfully recovered gallium from byproduct material sourced at Rio Tinto's Vaudreuil alumina refinery in Quebec.
"This milestone is a major step forward in our joint efforts to create a new and robust supply of gallium," said Indium Corp. President and CEO Ross Berntson.
Now, the New York-based critical minerals firm is working on fully developing an extraction process for commercial deployment at Rio Tinto's Quebec refinery.
The global mining and refining company is now installing a demonstration plant at its Vaudreuil alumina refinery capable of producing 3.5 tons of gallium per year.
The longer-term vision is to ramp up this pilot plant to a full-scale operation capable of producing 40 tons of gallium per year, which would elevate Canada to the largest producer of the tech metal outside of China.
"Together, through this innovative partnership, Rio Tinto and Indium Corporation strive to strengthen the North American supply chain for gallium, a critical and strategic mineral," said Pécresse.
Gallium is typically recovered as a byproduct of aluminum and zinc refining.
Rio Tinto and Indium Corp. are not the only companies endeavoring to provide a reliable North American supply of gallium.
In June, ReElement Technologies produced ultra-pure gallium and terbium, one of the rarest and most critical rare earths, from discarded U.S. defense stockpiles.
The company's ability to produce this pair of highly critical minerals is due to a unique technology developed at Purdue University that has proven to be a safer and lower-cost alternative to solvent extraction for recovering high-purity rare earth and other critical minerals from ore and unconventional feedstock such as end-of-life magnets, battery materials, and coal waste.
"Our goal is to offer U.S.-sourced refined products that meet or exceed quality and price expectations," said ReElement Technologies CEO Mark Jensen.
This cutting-edge technology has opened the potential for recovering critical minerals from previously overlooked sources.
The U.S. defense sector, in particular, has significant quantities of material that have historically been landfilled but are enriched with critical minerals that can be recovered through its process at costs competitive with or even below those of Chinese suppliers.
Jensen says that multiple defense clients have validated the ReElement process and "are now converting those evaluations into commercial opportunities."
In addition to gallium, these commercial opportunities include the production of germanium, tantalum, yttrium, and a variety of rare earth elements – all of which are critical to America's economy and defense.
ReElement and Rio Tinto's initiatives provide the key to breaking America's heavy dependence on China for gallium and a long list of other metals critical to high-tech, clean energy, and defense.
"Control of the midstream is essential to rebuilding America's competitive position in the global critical mineral supply chain," said Jensen.
With more than 17 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration, and technology metals.
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