But it would be limited to gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum.
Meanwhile tantalum (used as an insulator in mobile-phone chips) once became so valuable that it, too, helped drive a war the civil war in eastern Congo, where its ore has been dusted over the countryside like icing sugar by ancient volcanic eruptions.The latest element to be dragged out of obscurity by the chemist-descendants of Prince Henry the Navigator is hafnium.
For example, the cost of producing the metal powders suitable for use in 3D printing, titanium and tantalum, are rapidly falling, enabling the use of high-value metals in consumer products.
Mobile phones and computers use copper for their wiring and rely on cobalt, germanium, lithium, nickel, platinum and tantalum for other components.
In the case of indium, gallium and tantalum it is their unique electrical properties that are of interest.
Intel has examined the possibility of replacing silicon oxide transistor gates with thinner ones made of oxides of aluminium, titanium or tantalum.
They were so valuable that wars were fought to control their supply in some cases.In the case of indium, gallium and tantalum it is their unique electrical properties that are of interest.
And that is what Metalysis is doing in its new tantalum factory, and what it hopes to do for titanium and the rest.The difference between its process and that of Hall and Héroult (and why electrolysis has not previously been used to make metals such as tantalum and titanium) is that the Hall-Héroult method requires both input oxide and output metal to be in liquid form.
There, the ions react to form carbon dioxide, while the cathode is gradually transformed from oxide to metal.The company's first product is tantalum.
That is possible because this part of the transistor is made of tantalum pentoxide, a material whose atoms are arranged in a lattice which contains holes large enough for copper atoms to squeeze through.The mechanical transistor, more properly called a nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) transistor, creates and destroys the connection between source and drain mechanically.
More recent commercial discoveries include tantalum and tin, and there has been a rediscovery of something more enticing still: gold.Visitors to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo invariably gasp at the lavish use of that metal in the treasures of Tutankhamun, yet for nearly two millennia the mines in Egypt's eastern desert that made it the biggest supplier of gold to the ancient world lay unexploited.
