When the Eiffel Tower was built, it required 7,000 tons of steel. Today, if a small amount of the rare metal niobium is added to each ton of steel, replicating the Eiffel Tower would require 5,000 fewer tons of steel.
An electric toothbrush vibrates 31,000 times per minute, driven by a tiny magnet made with rare metals such as neodymium and dysprosium.
An F-35 fighter jet uses 920 pounds (approximately 417 kilograms) of beryllium, gallium, lithium, and tantalum. A quarter of its airframe is made of titanium.
We have quietly entered a new era—the age of rare metals. The products we use every day, from smartphones to cars, rely heavily on hard-to-obtain metals.
Each era has its specific resources: iron-shaped weaponry; coal, oil, and gas provided light and electricity. Now, rare earth elements, indium, and tungsten play crucial roles. Rare metals are the foundation of modern high technology, green industries, and military manufacturing.
Since its inception, the iPhone has gradually incorporated nearly half of the elements found on Earth. These metals have made iPhones smaller and more powerful:
For instance, indium acts as an invisible connection, serving as a transparent conductor between the screen and the user’s fingers;
Europium and terbium produce vibrant red and green colors on the screen, while tantalum regulates the phone’s electrical energy.
Manufacturing iPhone components also requires rare metals: cerium polishes glass to a molecular-level smoothness.
Rare metals are everywhere in our lives, from towering bridges to earbuds. They are in camera lenses, sofas, computers, cars, and bridges. They are rarely used alone. Like yeast in pizza—without that small amount of yeast, there would be no pizza; without rare metals, there would be no high-tech world.
When we say rare metals are "rare," it doesn’t necessarily mean they are geologically scarce. Rather, they are used in minuscule amounts and are extremely difficult to refine and synthesize. The annual global consumption of each rare metal is only a few hundred or thousand tons—enough to fit in a single railroad car.
In comparison, copper production reaches 1.4 million tons per year. To obtain just one ounce of rhenium, 120 tons of copper ore are required, and extracting lithium from brine takes one to two years. Thus, what is truly scarce are metallurgists, as these metals are chemical creations rather than materials that can be directly mined.
Until 150 years ago, almost all materials in ordinary households came from nearby quarries or forests. By the 1960s, with the emergence of more advanced supply chains and increased demand for consumer goods, the average American home used about 20 elements.
In the 1990s, Intel used only 15 elements to manufacture chips. Today, the company’s products require nearly 60 elements. While Edison’s lightbulb contained just one metal filament, today’s LED bulbs are more akin to computer hardware, utilizing rare elements such as gallium, indium, and rare earth elements.
The American Chemical Society has found that by the next century, 44 out of the 94 naturally occurring elements will face supply risks. Rare metals are key components of green technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels. They enable the conversion of free resources like sunlight and wind into electricity. However, if the current supply capacity does not improve, there will be no opportunity to develop the green technologies needed to mitigate climate change.
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