Neodymium, europium, terbium and other rare earth metals that were once barely heard of are now commonplace in phone touchscreens, electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and other modern technologies due to their useful magnetic and electronic properties.
The only one you will not find is promethium, which is radioactive. Many of the vivid red, blue, and green colors you see on your screen are due to rare-earth metals, which are also used in the smartphone's circuitry and in the speakers. Also, your phone would not be able to vibrate without neodymium and dysprosium.
Bastnaesite is a source of rare-earth elements used to produce magnets in speakers, microphones, and vibration motors. Germanium China1 Sphalerite Conducts electricity Battery, display, electronics and circuitry, and vibration components.
Among the chemical elements used in smartphones are copper, gold and silver for wiring, lithium and cobalt in the battery, and aluminium, silicon, oxygen and potassium in the glass screen.
If you use an iPhone, an REE called lanthanum helps make sure the screen has a vivid color pop, while neodymium and dysprosium are credited for helping the device vibrate, among other uses. In electric cars, magnets, which are used to help power the vehicle, rely heavily on rare earths such as neodymium.
Copper. Copper is actually the most common mineral found in cellphones.
There's yttrium and lanthanum and cerium and terbium. Europium, gadolinium, dysprosium, neodymium… of students memorize the periodic table of elements. But they're likely in your pocket.
The elements range in crustal abundance from cerium, the 25th most abundant element of the 78 common elements in the Earth's crust at 60 parts per million, to thulium and lutetium, the least abundant rare-earth elements at about 0.5 part per million.
Apple was the first electronics company to publish a list of cobalt and lithium refiners in its battery supply chain, with cobalt in 2016 and lithium in 2020. In 2017, the company mapped its supply chain for rare earths.
Gold in iPhones
A typical iPhone is estimated to house around 0.034g of gold, 0.34g of silver, 0.015g of palladium and less than one-thousandth of a gram of platinum. It also contains the less valuable but still significant aluminum (25g) and copper (around 15g).
Tantalum from coltan is used to manufacture tantalum capacitors which are used for mobile phones, personal computers, automotive electronics, and cameras. Coltan mining is widespread in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
There is not just gold, silver, platinum, but also about 60 other metals contained within a modern-day smartphone.
Mercury is possibly one of the most toxic chemicals to dispose of as it can contaminate the earth, water, and air if it is not disposed of correctly. The battery in a phone also contains carbon, mercury, cadmium and lithium cobalt oxide.
Lithium is used in (you guessed it) lithium-ion batteries, which are used in most modern phones. Cobalt can be used to coat copper wires in order to make microchips more reliable. Gold and silver are used in circuit boards, along with other materials like copper and palladium.
A single mobile phone contains around 0.04 g of gold, which may not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that there are estimated to be more cell phones on the planet than people.
In fact, computer parts contain the most gold. It is possible to recover gold from computer boards; it is also possible to extract gold from motherboards, integrated circuits, contacts, pins and printed circuit boards.
The 17 rare earth elements are: lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), holmium (Ho), erbium (Er), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), lutetium (Lu), scandium (Sc), and yttrium (Y).
Hence, Lithium is not a rare earth mineral.
That is because cobalt is one of the main components in our cellphones - in our cellphone batteries. And in a lot of ways, cobalt made our cellphones possible. GARCIA: Your phone has about 8 grams of cobalt in it - 8 grams. And when you put it together, it's about the size of a Mike and Ike.
Astatine is a chemical element with the symbol At and atomic number 85. It is the rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust, occurring only as the decay product of various heavier elements.
"At" stands for astatine. It is an element with 85 protons packed into its nucleus, thus the atomic number "85" ... The problem is, there's something about 85 protons in a tight space that nature doesn't enjoy. Almost as soon as they squeeze together bits of nuclear material get spat out, or get added, and poof!
Diamond (C)
Diamond is a form of carbon, an element used to make electrodes in mobile phone batteries....