Jan

4

Rare Earth minerals are in the news day after day and share prices are rocketing. When will gravity take hold?

I don't know but it seems like there are a lot of variables to consider and things might look quite different a year from now– particularly if true substitutes are found and new, mined sources start to or are anticipated to enter the marketplace. Rhodium is a fairly costly metal so it will be interesting to see if the following discovery has commercial applications and if it will lead to other "artificial rare earth metals".

It also will be interesting to see how China plays out its hand :

China's decreasing rate of rare earth exports is forcing the world to scramble for alternative sources. Now the Japanese have artificially produced a palladium-like metal, commonly used for catalytic converters.

The world–and particularly the Japanese–may be in a frenzy over China's newly announced 35% cut in rare earth exports, those used to produce many high-tech devices, in the first half of this year. But a Japanese scientist has found one answer: Create the metals artificially.

Professor Hiroshi Kitagawa of Kyoto University has announced that he and his team of researchers have artificially produced a metal similar to palladium, a material commonly used in catalytic converters. In his lab, Kitagawa used a heating method to produce ultramicroscopic metal particles, ultimately mixing the usually resistant rhodium and silver to create the palladium-like metal.


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