Can we cope without rare-earth elements?

Researchers look for materials for the future A mobile phone is full of raw materials: its electronic components contain valuable precious metals, such as gold, silver and platinum, rare metals, like cobalt, gallium or indium, and rare-earth elements, such as neodymium. Often, the old devices end up in the bin - and, with them, their precious cargo. "These days, we already sometimes have higher concentrations of elements like gold or germanium in landfills for electronic scrap than in some of the mines they are extracted from," says materials chemist Michael J. Bojdys. And some of these materials could become scarce in the future. Since 2011, the EU has been keeping a "list of critical raw materials", in which it enumerates all the substances there may no longer be enough of in the coming decades - either because there is only very little of them in the Earth's crust or because they are very difficult to recycle. There are currently 30 materials on this list, including quite a few that ensure that the displays of mobile phones and laptops or flat screens light up. As Visiting Professor of Organic Materials Chemistry and head of the Functional Nanomaterials Group at IRIS Adlershof and the Department of Chemistry, Michael Bojdys and his team conduct research into which alternative materials could fill these voids in future.