Criticality of Metals and Metalloids
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Criticality of metals and metalloids T. E. Graedela,b,1, E. M. Harpera, N. T. Nassara, Philip Nussa, and Barbara K. Recka aCenter for Industrial Ecology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511; and bStellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, Stellenbosch 7602, South Africa Edited by B. L. Turner, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, and approved February 27, 2015 (received for review January 8, 2015) Imbalances between metal supply and demand, real or antici- Despite one’s intuition that it should be straightforward to pated, have inspired the concept of metal criticality. We here designate one element as critical and another as not, determining characterize the criticality of 62 metals and metalloids in a 3D criticality turns out to be very challenging indeed. This is because “criticality space” consisting of supply risk, environmental implica- criticality depends not only on geological abundance, but on tions, and vulnerability to supply restriction. Contributing factors a host of other factors such as the potential for substitution, the that lead to extreme values include high geopolitical concentra- degree to which ore deposits are geopolitically concentrated, the tion of primary production, lack of available suitable substitutes, state of mining technology, the amount of regulatory oversight, and political instability. The results show that the limitations for geopolitical initiatives, governmental instability, and economic many metals important in emerging electronics (e.g., gallium and policy (10). As various organizations (e.g., refs. 11–13) have selenium) are largely those related to supply risk; those of plati- attempted to determine resource criticality in recent years, a va- num group metals, gold, and mercury, to environmental implica- riety of metrics and methodological approaches have been cho- tions; and steel alloying elements (e.g., chromium and niobium) as sen. The predictable result has been that criticality designations well as elements used in high-temperature alloys (e.g., tungsten have differed widely (14), thus offering relatively little guidance and molybdenum), to vulnerability to supply restriction. The met- to industrial users of the resources or to governments concerned als of most concern tend to be those available largely or entirely as about the resilience of their supplies. byproducts, used in small quantities for highly specialized applica- In an effort to bring enhanced rigor and transparency to the tions, and possessing no effective substitutes. evaluation of resource criticality, we have developed a quite comprehensive methodology. It is applicable to users of different economic geology | materials science | substitution | supply risk | organizational types (e.g., corporations, national governments, sustainability global-level analysts) and is purposely flexible so as to allow user control over aspects of the methodology such as the relative odern technology relies on virtually all of the stable ele- weighting of variables. As with any evaluation using an aggre- Mments of the periodic table. Fig. 1, which pictures the gation of indicators, the choice of those indicators is, in part, an concentrations of elements on a printed circuit board, provides exercise in judgment (15), but alternative choices have been an illustration of that fact. The concentrations of copper and iron evaluated over several years and we believe all of our final are obviously the highest, and others such as cesium are much choices to be defendable in detail. lower, but concentration clearly does not reflect elemental im- We have applied the methodology to 62 metals and metal- portance: all of the elements are required to maintain the func- loids (hereafter termed “metals” for simplicity of exposition)— tions for which the board was designed. However, some elements essentially all elements except highly soluble alkalis and halo- may not be routinely available well into the future. How is this risk ’ “ ” “ ” gens, the noble gases, nature s grand nutrients (carbon, nitrogen, of availability, or elemental criticality, to be determined? oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur), and radioactive elements such as ra- Some perspective on elemental origins and availability is dium and francium that are of little technological use. Detailed useful in discussing criticality. As is now well established, the results for individual groups of elements have been published sep- elements of the periodic table, which together create and define arately (16–21). Here we report on the patterns and dependencies the composition of our planet, were created over the eons in the centers of exploding stars (1, 2). Their relative abundances in the Significance universe are not duplicated in Earth’s crust, however, because of the differentiating processes of material accretion, geological segregation, and tectonic evolution (3). A feature of Earth’s ore- In the past decade, sporadic shortages of metals and metalloids forming processes is their creation of large spatial disparities in crucial to modern technology have inspired attempts to de- “ ” elemental abundance, with some locales hosting rich stores of termine the relative criticality of various materials as a guide mineable resources, others almost none. It is these resources, to materials scientists and product designers. The variety of rich or not, dispersed or not, that enable modern technology and methodologies that have been used for this purpose have hence modern society. (predictably) resulted in widely varying results, which are there- Until the second half of the 20th century, only a modest fore of little use. In the present study, we develop a comprehen- fraction of the elements was used in technology to any significant sive, flexible, and transparent approach that we apply to 62 degree, and limits to those resources were not thought to be metals and metalloids. We find that the metals of most con- matters for useful discussion. The situation began to change with cern tend to be those with three characteristics: they are available largely or entirely as byproducts, they are used in the publication of the “Paley Report” in 1952 (4), which sug- small quantities for highly specialized applications, and they gested that resource limitations were, in fact, possible. A decade possess no effective substitutes. later, a civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo caused a significant, if temporary, decrease in the supply of cobalt (5), Author contributions: T.E.G. and B.K.R. designed research; T.E.G., E.M.H., N.T.N., P.N., and indicating that the Paley Report’s concerns might indeed have B.K.R. performed research; E.M.H., N.T.N., and P.N. analyzed data; and T.E.G., E.M.H., N.T.N., merit. More recently, a decrease in exports of rare earth ele- and B.K.R. wrote the paper. ments by China resulted in a variety of technological disruptions The authors declare no conflict of interest. (5, 6). The result has been numerous calls in recent years (e.g., This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. refs. 7–9) to better assess elemental resources and to determine 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: [email protected]. SCIENCE “ ” which of them are critical, the aim being to minimize further This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. SUSTAINABILITY disruptions to global and national technologies and economies. 1073/pnas.1500415112/-/DCSupplemental. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1500415112 PNAS | April 7, 2015 | vol. 112 | no. 14 | 4257–4262 Downloaded by guest on September 24, 2021 like. Formally, the results that follow are for a “snapshot in time”: the year 2008, largely because much of the necessary data are reported with long time delays. We are now in the process of updating our database to 2012, the most recent year with satis- factory data availability. Our initial review of this information indicates only modest revisions in the determinations, so we regard the results that we present here as fully applicable over the medium and longer time scales we have aimed to capture. Metal Criticality By making use of the global-level methodology described in previous paragraphs and with additional details provided in SI Appendix,sections6–10, we have evaluated each of the criticality- related indicators for the 62 metals of our analysis. In Fig. 3 the indicator results at both global and national (US) levels are shown on a common color scale. These determinations permit us Fig. 1. The concentrations (parts per million) of 44 elements found on to investigate the degree of independence of the indicators in printed circuit boards (33). our criticality methodology. As is illustrated and discussed in SI Appendix, section 11, there is little to no correlation among any of the indicators. The determinations of Fig. 3 form the basis for our of the entire suite of studies (thus, for some two-thirds of the pe- analyses of overall criticality, as described below for the global riodic table), present both general results and exceptions of par- level and in SI Appendix,section12for the United States. ticular interest, and discuss the implications of the results for An overview of the 62 metal criticality results is provided modern technology now and in the future. by plotting the three-axes results for each metal in criticality Our methodology locates individual metals in a 3D “criticality A ” space (Fig. 4 ). A number of metals of quite different criti- space, the axes being supply risk, environmental implications, cality properties are concentrated at the middle of the diagram; and vulnerability to supply restriction. Evaluations of each axis they may rank moderately high on one or two of the axes, but not involve a number of criticality-related indicators, each measured extremely high. Another group of metals is concentrated toward – SI Appendix – on a 0 100 scale and weighted equally ( , sections 1 the lower left front corner. For those metals, criticality concerns 3). Related methodologies address global, national, and corpo- are relatively low on all three axes. A third group is located to- rate levels.