Category
Critical Raw Materials
3 articles in this category
CHEMISTRY
Chemists mix glowing liquids and get new anti-counterfeiting marks
Four glowing liquids can be mixed like paints, and each mixture has its own "fingerprint" under a UV lamp. Chemists want to use this to protect documents and medicines from fakes, for now in the lab.
2026-10-17
CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS
Europe imports gallium. Factories pour it down the drain
Europe pays a fortune for gallium used in electronics, while chip factories pour it down the drain. A German spin-off pulls the metal back out with biomolecules — for Poland, a faster “mine” than drilling.
2026-09-09
GEOLOGY & MINING
Lithium that no one could get out. Lingchen Kong did just that.
77 sodium atoms for each lithium atom. 40 failed experiments. One graduate student from Washington, D.C., who solved a problem that billion-dollar companies were working on. Here's how Lingchen Kong extracted lithium from geothermal brine - without chemicals, at a third of the market price.
2026-08-03