Skip to content
Substrata
Join

Gallium, refined

A soft metal recovered from aluminium refining, used in fast power and radio chips. China refines almost all of it and licenses its export.

The bottleneck itself →

  1. Research42 (Computed: Items per stage = papers, preprints and grants collected for the bottleneck whose relevance score is 2 or more, placed on a stage by the rule in lib/science.ts; judgements are counted separately.)+1 (Computed: Items first collected in the last 7 days whose publication or award date is within the last 30 days.) new
  2. Lab1 (Computed: Items per stage = papers, preprints and grants collected for the bottleneck whose relevance score is 2 or more, placed on a stage by the rule in lib/science.ts; judgements are counted separately.)
  3. Pilot0 (Computed: Items per stage = papers, preprints and grants collected for the bottleneck whose relevance score is 2 or more, placed on a stage by the rule in lib/science.ts; judgements are counted separately.)
  4. Early0 (Computed: Items per stage = papers, preprints and grants collected for the bottleneck whose relevance score is 2 or more, placed on a stage by the rule in lib/science.ts; judgements are counted separately.)
  5. Scale0 (Computed: Items per stage = papers, preprints and grants collected for the bottleneck whose relevance score is 2 or more, placed on a stage by the rule in lib/science.ts; judgements are counted separately.)

judged, with a citation claimed, no citationNumber: papers, preprints and grants the feeds collected — unreviewed

Searched for “gallium recovery”, “gallium extraction”, “gallium refining” in titles and abstracts.

43 collected items, newest first ↓Judged by hand ↓Who is active ↓

All stagesFundamental researchApplied / labPilot / demonstrationEarly commercialAt scaleNewestMost cited

Judged by hand

Readiness and substitute status, with reasoning

  • SubstitutePilot / demonstrationJudgement, cited · 2026-09-17

    Primary production outside China

    demonstrated, not qualified. This is not a substitute for the material but for the supplier, and it is the relevant one: gallium is recovered as a byproduct of bauxite and zinc processing, so the capacity exists wherever alumina is refined. Germany, Hungary and Kazakhstan all produced it and stopped, in 2016, 2015 and 2013 — the plants were not destroyed by physics but closed on price. Restarting is a capital decision, which is why export controls moved the price before they moved the supply.

    Source ↗

  • SubstituteEarly commercialJudgement, cited · 2026-09-17

    Silicon or indium phosphide in the device, instead of gallium compounds

    qualified for some uses. For some optoelectronic and RF parts another semiconductor will do, and for others the gallium compound is chosen precisely because nothing else has its properties. A substitution that works in one product line says nothing about the next: each device has to be requalified, which is the years, not the chemistry.

    Source ↗

Collected by the feeds

Newest first