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 →

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

Collected items ↓Judged by hand ↓Who is active ↓

All stagesFundamental researchApplied / labPilot / demonstrationEarly commercialAt scaleNewestMost cited

Pilot / demonstration — readiness 5 to 7 of the nine-point scale. Evidence it takes: A pilot line, field trial or demonstration announced by the organisation running it; a demonstration or SBIR Phase II grant.

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 ↗

Collected by the feeds

Newest first

Nothing collected at this stage yet.