Metals needed for the electronics industry at risk

It is common knowledge that copper, lead and tin are indispensable metal parts in electrical and electronic products. All three are raw materials of native chemical elements and are being mined in many parts of the world. The demand for copper is steadily increasing due to the ongoing energy transition to electricity. It is estimated that the demand over the next 30 years to be around double the amount consumed in the previous 30, not least since the world’s rapid adoption of AI is leading to a surge in demand for data centers. 
Copper’s superior electrical and thermal conductivity make it an essential material for computer circuitry, power delivery, cooling, and data transfer. The situation for lead and tin is, however, different since lead is a highly toxic metal and being banned or restricted in most part of the world, such as by the RoHS Directive in Europe. Therefore, alloys of lead and tin as traditionally used as soldering metal in the electrotechnical industry, are being re-placed by other compounds.

But today’s electronics industry heavily depends on other critical ingredients, namely rare-earth metals for manufacturing essential components. There are 17 types of rare metals including neodymium, dysprosium, and yttrium, which are indispensable for producing e.g. high-performance magnets, semiconductors, and batteries.
Rare-earth metals are critical to the high-tech society as an essential component of mobile phones, computers and many other everyday devices.
Compared to the other critical materials for the electronic industry, the rare-earth metals are also rare in the sense of amounts and places where they are available. The countries with the biggest reserves are presently China, Vietnam, Brazil and Russia, followed by quite less amounts in Australia, India, USA, Greenland and Tanzania. Ukraine, which is highly focused in media these days, also possesses rare-earth metals such as 
lanthanum and cerium, used in TVs and lighting; neodymium, used in wind turbines and EV batteries; and erbium and yttrium, whose applications range from nuclear power to lasers.

With the risk of growing geopolitical polarization, which presently seems inevitable, the increasing demand and limited global supply mean that recycling to recover these metals efficiently from discarded products has become a clear necessity for the electronic industry.

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(This article is based on information available on the Internet and edited by T.Sollie)