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As nations and industries grapple with the global push towards net zero carbon emissions, researchers  from India’s Bengaluru Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) have discovered a new material called “single-crystalline scandium nitride (ScN)” that is able to “emit, detect, and modulate infrared light with high efficiency making it useful for solar and thermal energy harvesting and for optical communication devices by effectively converting infrared light into renewable energy, according to a recent government press release.

The researchers find that the “exotic polaritons [i.e. quasi-particles] in the ScN can be utilized for solar and thermal energy harvesting.  Also, belonging to the same family of materials as gallium nitride (GaN), scandium nitride is compatible with modern complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) or Si-chip technology and, therefore, could be easily integrated for on-chip optical communication devices.”

While discoveries like these in their initial stages are far from commercially viable, these findings once more underscore the importance of materials science, which has been yielding key breakthroughs at neck-breaking speeds, yielding new applications for many critical materials — in this case, and not for the first time in recent years, scandium.

Followers of ARPN may recall the “Light Rider,” a high-tech motorcycle, which, because it is held together by an intricate web of “Scalmalloy,” is perhaps the lightest motorcycle in the world. Scalmalloy is an “aluminum alloy powder ‘with almost the specific strength of titanium’ [used] to build incredible structures by fusing thin layers of the material together.” One of its key components is scandium – which explains the first syllable of its somewhat curious name, Aluminum being the middle-portion, with the “M” standing for Magnesium.

It is new applications like these that are making scandium an increasingly indispensable tech metal, particularly in the context of the lightweighting revolution – a development marked by the “growing imperative to lightweight transportation, buildings, and infrastructure systems.” 

Add to that the newly-found application for scandium in renewable energy, and we have another catalyst for the adoption rate of scandium, use of which was long limited to “niche Western products such as baseball bats and lacrosse sticks,” because of its classification as an “if” metal.  Writes the British Minor Metals Trade Association:

“Scandium has long been considered an ‘if’ metal. If only it were available in quantity, it could transform aircraft production and fuel consumption. If only it were available in quantity, it could speed the emerging hydrogen economy. If only it were available in quantity, it could accelerate the rollout of 5G technologies. And so on.

The view has been that scandium could be used in numerous large-volume applications, if only supplies were sufficient to meet the potential demand. Manufacturers regularly cited a lack of sufficient scandium supply as the reason why they did not roll out new uses and products containing scandium.”

Russia has long used scandium-aluminum alloys in its MIG fighter jets, but then Russia has long had commercial domestic scandium production.

While the same cannot be said for the United States, including the material on the U.S. Government Critical Minerals List, may be a sign that change is underway for North America’s scandium supplies. Writes Reuters’s Andy Home in regard to a long-standing mining operation in Quebec:

“It turns out, though, that Rio Tinto has been producing scandium all along at its titanium operations over the Canadian border. But the metal now deemed critical was going with other waste into a tailings pond.  The company has now worked out how to extract scandium oxide from the titanium processing stream, making it North America’s sole producer.”

In fact, harvesting mine tailings — again courtesy of materials science yielding research breakthroughs — is quickly becoming an important piece of the critical mineral resource supply puzzle, as mine waste tailings often “contain metals (such as rare earth elements) that were not considered worth extracting when the ores were initially processed, but which have since increased in value and use,” according to a 2017 research paper.

Reuters’s Home points to another Rio Tinto operation, its Kennecott copper smelter in Utah, where the company is converting the site’s anode slime waste stream into copper-tellurium, which is then sent on for refining and usage in photovoltaic solar panels.

Writes Home:

“[These] are examples of a new industry trend towards so called whole-concept mining, also known as total mining, broadening a historical focus on one or two primary products to potentially everything of metallic value in the ore being mined and processed.”

Pointing to other examples, including Russia’s Rusal harvesting aluminum tailings to recover scandium, he concludes:

“The USGS has been tasked with mapping and collecting data for areas containing mine waste ‘to increase understanding of above-ground critical mineral resources in previously disturbed areas’.

It’s not only a highly cost-effective way of closing the country’s critical minerals gaps, but also a way of closing the green-on-green divisions that cause every new energy transition metals mine to run into fierce environmental opposition.

The green future, it turns out, can be achieved at least in part by cleaning up the mining legacy of the past.”  

Against the backdrop of mounting geopolitical and ongoing supply chain challenges, countries are left grappling with the the mineral intensity of the sought-after global transition towards a net zero carbon emissions future.

In their quest to untangle complex critical mineral supply chains and reduce over-reliance on adversary nations, the extent of which was first brought to light in the coronavirus pandemic, nations are not only forming partnerships like the recently-announced Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), which Reuters’s Andy Home likens to the formation of a “metallic NATO,” they are also taking their own steps to secure supply chains for domestic manufacturers.

In the following, we’re taking a look at resource related activities in countries beyond ARPN’s usual purview (which of course is focused on the United States but sometimes includes our close allies Canada and Australia):

• Earlier in July, the United Kingdom released its first ever Critical Minerals Strategy, setting out, in the words of Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK’s “plan to secure our supply chains, by boosting domestic capability in a way that generates new jobs and wealth, attracting investment and playing a leading role in solving global challenges with our international partners.”

  The announcement comes only days after the launch of a Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre (CMIC), which seeks to “boost the country’s resilience and growth by providing up-to-date data and analysis on the supply of critical minerals,” and “develop evidence-based policies aimed at developing more robust critical mineral supply chains to the UK.”

• Germany, too, is taking steps to decouple from adversaries and bolster its domestic supply chains emphasizing domestic production, processing and recycling over imports.  Upon taking office, the new Federal Government  set itself the ambitious goal of presenting a comprehensive National Security Strategy within its first year. The process was kicked off in March of 2022, a few weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which served as an eye opener for Germans and Europeans in terms of their dependence on Russian energy supplies, particularly oil and gas. Consequently, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has made clear that Germany must ensure that it cannot again fall victim to blackmail as it did over its dependence on Russian energy, and is looking for ways to reduce the country’s economic dependence on China, which is particularly high when it comes to supplies of Rare Earths.

  In the same vein, the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), in partnership with the German Resource Research Institute (GERRI) has released a research paper calling for a “rethink” for German resource policy. Outlining that German resource policy rests on three pillars — imports, domestic development and processing, and recycling — the authors of the report call for strengthening the second and third pillar over the first one going forward.

• But it’s not just Western nations feeling the heat — South Korea, too, is starting to feel vulnerable over critical minerals.  The Korean National Assembly Research Service has said that “securing metal resources will be a key to energy security, and stressed the importance of plans to stockpile metal resources and diversify suppliers.”

  A founding member of the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP) led by the United States, South Korea is planning to “draw up related measures such as measures to stockpile more mineral resources,” after having neglected its resource policy over the past decade, according to researchers.

These are only a few examples of mineral resource policy developments beyond ARPN’s usual purview, but they all make one thing abundantly clear:  With geopolitical tensions rising, countries are realizing that critical mineral resource supply chains are vulnerable to manipulation or weaponization, and are taking steps to shore up their domestic development and processing capabilities.  All-of-the-Above increasingly appears to be the order of the day.  Friend-shoring is an important pillar of any resource strategy, but must be embedded into a comprehensive approach from mine to manufacturing and across all segments of the value chain.

With global pressures on supply chains continuing to mount, the United States and allied countries announced the formation of a new initiative to bolster critical mineral supplies during last month’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention. The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) comprises the United States, Canada, Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of [...]

It’s a brave new world. Rising geopolitical tensions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increasing resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere and booming material demand to power the accelerating global push towards net zero carbon are warranting a rethink on the part of policy stakeholders not just in the United States, but [...]

It’s not exactly news to followers of ARPN that the global green energy transition will require vast amounts of critical minerals, however, against the backdrop of the raised geopolitical stakes in light of Russia’s war on Ukraine and rising resource nationalism in the southern hemisphere, new figures released by Belgium’s KU Leuven University underscore the [...]

As U.S. stakeholders grapple with the question of how to bolster U.S. supply chains for the battery criticals and other critical minerals amidst skyrocketing demand scenarios and growing geopolitical pressures, our allies are taking steps of their own to unleash their mineral potential. Looking north, in order to “secure Canada’s place in important supply chains with [...]

Stressing that the “The United States depends on unreliable foreign sources for many of the strategic and critical materials necessary for the clean energy,” specifically for EV and large capacity batteries, U.S. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate buildout of domestic supply chains via Presidential Determination earlier this month. While, as Reuter columnist Andy [...]

Last week, against the backdrop of mounting pressures on U.S. critical mineral supply chains, U.S. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to encourage domestic production of the metals and minerals deemed critical for electric vehicle and large capacity batteries. The move is a sign that “America is finally taking the battery metal shortage seriously,” as the [...]

 While in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, concerns over how the war would impact global supply chains were mostly focused on oil and natural gas, it quickly became apparent that the ramifications of drawn-out hostilities would stretch far beyond the global oil and gas sector. With Ukraine considered the “breadbasket of Europe,” Russia’s invasion [...]

As the global push towards a low carbon energy future intensifies, the mining industry has been taking significant steps towards reducing its carbon footprint. As friends of ARPN will appreciate, the catalyst is the materials science revolution redefining how the world uses scores of metals and minerals for technology applications unknown just a few years [...]