Gallium is primarily used to make GaN and GaAs which are used in microwave circuitry, microelectronics, and high-speed logic circuitry. The semiconducting GaN is alloyed with indium (InGaN) for light-emitting diode applications and diode lasers used in advanced LED communications devices.

GaN is also an important multi-junction photovoltaic material for satellite applications, but nearly 98% of all gallium is used in semiconductors, integrated circuitry, ultra-high speed logic chips, low-noise microwave preamplifiers in communications devices, and optoelectronics.

Weapons platforms such as the Patriot missile defense systems use high power, high-speed micro-circuitry based on GaN semiconductor materials.

The Biggest Thing Since Silicon: Raytheon’s Gallium Nitride Breakthrough

Other defense-systems such as phased-array radar, electronic warfare systems, satellite communications systems, and 5G wireless communications are dependent upon GaN.

Gallium is alloyed with plutonium during the manufacture of nuclear weapon “pits”. It improves the machinability of Pu metal.

Gallium can also be used to corrupt aluminum and cause it to catastrophically fail. When contacted with gallium, aluminum will form the Al-Ga alloy which is strongly susceptible to oxidation, corrosion, and embrittlement. A small amount of gallium can completely destroy the structural integrity of aluminum-skinned aircraft, and even destroy aluminum structural beams making affected assets inoperable.

One can assign their own importance to items #1 and #2 above. But probably ranks up there as “critically important” to defense systems.

The US has known gallium deposits, but few of those deposits are developed. The US has “exported” its demand for critical materials such as gallium to foreign countries having historic records for using their natural resources as political leverage to achieve their political agenda. So the US now relies largely on China and other countries to supply us with many of our economic, technological, and defense-related materials. China has also become the dominant world power for the refinement and manufacture of goods containing these critical materials. When such countries like China, who has increasingly been pushing their economic imperialism as of late, dominate materials supply chains, and cut off supplies of critical materials to the point that it impedes our ability to deploy energy and defense technologies, then Houston, we have a problem. I have attached a few articles that are examples of why this issue may be of importance.

Also, scroll through this webpage report. You will quickly get the idea.

China produces a staggering 98 percent of the world’s supply of raw gallium.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies report is also attached if you can’t scroll through the presentation.

• Return to supplying our own critical minerals using a phased approach – abandon China as a critical material supplier and start shifting to obtaining supplies from other countries who are not trying to destroy the US. At the same time re-connect the US’s Gross Domestic Product to include the mineral extraction industry and re-start mining our own materials in this country. If we can do so by cleaning up messes of the past then good for us, we should consider it.
• Limit nuisance environmental lawsuits. Follow the FAST-41 legislation and reduce mining environmental permitting from ~17 years to <5 years. Sideline nuisance lawsuits against the federal government agencies (BLM, US Forest Service) and mining companies who are trying to produce critical materials from federal lands. Flush career bureaucrats out of key policy decision positions and establish fair and equitable resource production policies that focus on stewardship and responsible production. There are many companies out there that have been “doing it right”, fairly, and responsibly for many years. Get the “red tape” out of their way and let them stand up a mining supply chain.
• Bring back separations, refinement, materials manufacturing, and product assembly to US soil. Reinforce the Buy USA policies. Place significant import tariffs on Chinese critical materials imports and protect US industry while it is trying to stand up a stable domestic supply chain for critical materials. Lobby our allies around the world to do the same and stick China with large tariffs on their critical materials goods.
• Make Chinese materials and manufacturing practices obsolete by innovating and making goods better, faster, and cheaper than China can make them. Whereas it is very difficult to “out cheap China” it can be done. By advancing technology the US can develop new products and materials that allow for the US to manufacture something for 1/10th to 1/100th the cost of doing so in China. So, whereas it takes China a billion dollars and much environmental pollution to do something, we can develop technology that allows us to do the same thing for $100M and little to zero pollution. Advancing technology and R&D is our ticket to making China obsolete.
• Take an “all hands-on deck” approach at developing new technologies that make existing technologies obsolete and therefore Chinese technologies obsolete in the process. It is a Manhattan Project, only in 2024. That is the level of effort that will be needed.
• Vet every single person working on US technologies that improve our industrial competitiveness against Chinese business. Dramatically reduce the amount of espionage and loss of intellectual property going on by limiting Chinese foreign nationals working on US R&D and technology development in the US and around the world. Include academic institutions. Remove this “free pass” that academia gets when we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D at academic institutions where the professors employ Chinese graduate students who learn the technology then go back to China and practice it against us.

When ore is recovered from a deposit via mining the raw ore first undergoes a process called “beneficiation”. The term “beneficiation” is used to describe improving the economic value of the ore by removing the uneconomical components (aka gangue) from the valuable components. Beneficiation technologies designed to remove uneconomical from economical can employ many different methods that focus on the differences in physical/material properties to separate unwanted material (gangue) from valued material. Beneficiation methods could be as simple as washing the ore with water, to as complex as employing magnetic or electrophoretic or optical properties to differentiate and concentrate the valuable materials. By way of example, at the Mountain Pass mine in California, the mining company there employed some 21 different froth flotation steps on the ore at the front of the process to arrive at a ~50% mixed rare earth concentrate. Further beneficiation steps included roasting (with acid) to drive the ore concentrate to >90% mixed rare earth oxide.

Beneficiation leaves you… or should leave you… with a mixed ore concentrate. Some but not all gangue has been removed, and the “valued” materials are now more concentrated. But it’s still a mixture of multiple elements, including elements that are the primary product. The concentrate can also include other elements that are profitable to isolate and co-produce along with the main product. The concentrate could also contain specific contaminants that beneficiation could not fully get rid of. So what is done at this point, and how much additional ore processing is undertaken, is dependent upon the market value of the “valued” materials in the mixed concentrate, and the amount of time/energy it will take to separate the valuable materials from the contaminants. One could have to employ several more separations steps before dividing out all of the contaminants from the value-added materials, and then further divide all of the value-added materials from each other according to their kind. The answer “it depends on the ore and the technologies used” is applicable at this point. It also depends on how complex or how difficult it is to separate the components from each other. Separating zinc or nickel from REEs is relatively easy. Separating the individual REEs from each other involves some of the most difficult separations known to exist.

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is focused on improving the efficacy of several different beneficiation technologies (e.g., sortation, froth floatation, comminution, etc.) and several critical materials separations processes which follow the beneficiation step. INL technology is focused on reducing the time, energy, and reagents needed to process ores as well as to improve water management strategies. INL is also working to improve characterization and identification of materials, and to use AI/ML and robotics to physically segregate value-added materials from gangue. Many beneficiation and separations processes consume large amounts of water. At INL, we are working to remove water from processes. When water must be used for processing INL is developing methods to recover process water efficaciously and to re-use it time and again. INL is also moving away from processing that uses a lot of chemical reagents, and moving towards using processes that are directly coupled with electrons. That is called electrochemical processing. Electrochemical processing is far more efficient than chemical processing and uses less chemical reagents. INL is also well known for developing biologically-mediated critical material recovery processes and the development of bio-lixiviants. Those bio-hydrometallurgy processes are shown to be more environmentally beneficial than the mainstream industrial chemical-based mining processes.

The Critical Materials Innovation Hub CMI (formerly known as Critical Materials Institute CMI) does have a Focus Area dedicated to “diversifying supplies” which does have funded projects targeted at recovery of REEs from various materials. Over the past decade using CMI funding INL has developed several electrochemically-mediated ore processing technologies for recovery of valuable metals from ores. Those technologies are currently at the bench-scale. To date CMI has funded only a few projects targeting hard-rock ore processing, mostly related to MP Materials and bastnaesite ore. CMI has funded projects to recover REEs from tailings and phosphogypsum. Those projects are at the bench-scale. CMI researchers have looked at germanium recovery from a zinc plant, tellurium recovery from copper ore processing, recovery of REEs from phosphoric acid sludge, lithium recovery from geothermal brine, and development of froth flotation ligands to enhance recovery of REEs. Those are a few examples of critical materials recovery R&D projects that CMI has sponsored.

Here is some background information that may be of assistance in defining AI and how AI can be used in the manner you are describing. See the Forbes article:

7 Types Of Artificial Intelligence

I will reference the Forbes article in the answer to this question and use terms used therein.

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) has been used in science for many years. Mathematical algorithms have been developed and machine control tools like LabVIEW have been used for many years. Standardized protocols and programming software/languages for controlling machines and processes have been developed. Data/signal analysis tools and data processing algorithms are becoming more and more sophisticated to the point where near-real-time signal processing and fast data collection from sensors can be used to control processes and machines in near-real-time through data feedback loops. The use of algorithms and specific machine instructions is an example of ANI because all machines to date can only do what they have been programmed to do. They are Reactive Machines. They do not think or create for themselves. Even predictive algorithms and modeling tools are ANI even though they project or predict forward to answer to questions such as “based on historical behavior and data, what do we now predict could happen?” So even the weatherman uses ANI in atmospheric weather prediction models. The predictive tools are Limited Memory machines because they are capable of learning from current input and historical data to supply data back to the inquiry.

Generative AI, which is what everyone is talking about lately, uses algorithms which train on a set of data and learn the underlying patterns in the training data set. When interfacing with Generative AI the machine code accepts new data input, applies previous learning from the pattern data sets, and then generates new data that mirrors the training set and the newly input data. Generative AI is ANI and is practiced by Limited Memory Machines because those machines use new and historical datasets and can generate a creative response supplied by the algorithms.

That said, when considering mining and ore processing, today we rely heavily on Reactive Machines to aid us in controlling processes. We will continue to rely on Reactive Machines for the next decade. As new mining and ore processing methods are developed which rely more heavily on robotics, sensors, and automated processes that use machine learning algorithms, then Reactive Machines will still have a presence, but they will ultimately give way to more Limited Memory Machines which will use existing data, combined with new incoming data, to improve ore processing parameters that lead to improved efficiency and higher recovery yields. Mining and ore processing will eventually be heavily automated and it is expected that Limited Memory Machines will be used heavily to identify, concentrate, and separate the valuable metals from environmental media. Eventually, more Limited Learning Machines will be applied to examining ores and the mineralogy present in ores. Those Limited Learning Machines may provide insight into how to more efficiently take the ore apart to recover the metals. That remains to be seen. It may be 10 to 20 years before we are at that point where we are using Limited Learning Machines to suggest to us how to better take apart an ore.

Whereas INL is a member of CMI, we are not the lead laboratory for CMI. I believe Ames Lab would be the better lab to answer this question. The best person to answer this question would be Tom Lograsso who is the CMI Director. Please let me know if you would like Tom’s contact information.

The most significant looming challenge with processing environmental media for the recovery of metals is the fact that ore grades are getting lower and lower. Thus, the very first technologies applied in the beneficiation step will have to concentrate valuable metals in the feed stream by 100X to 1000X using minimal time and resource inputs. Thus, I foresee the greatest challenges and therefore the greatest opportunities will occur in the area of beneficiation technology research and development.

There will also be a significant focus on water usage in mining and better water management. Water migration offsite is one of the key liabilities that leads to contamination of ground water. Technologies that minimize use of water and lead to elimination of water transport offsite will be important.

Next generation mining technologies that minimize the environmental footprint of a mine will become important. Nobody wants a pit mine. The ideal mine is a minimum number of bore holes and all of the ore recovery is done underground using robotics. Prescription mining technology needs to be developed that only brings up the targeted materials and leaves behind all of the uneconomical materials in a thermodynamically stabile form that does not allow for leaching of toxics. R&D targeted at development of in-situ mining techniques will come to the forefront in the near future.

Idaho National Laboratory has many industrial partners (>30) we are currently engaging for development of technologies useful for critical materials recovery. Our industry partners range from mining companies currently mining REEs, lithium, cobalt, nickel, and other critical materials. We also partner with companies specializing in processing and separations. We partner and collaborate with companies producing products from geothermal brines, and other companies who are harvesting minerals from basinal brines. Idaho National Laboratory has been the Focus Area Lead for the past decade in the area of critical material recycle/recovery technologies within the Critical Materials Innovation Hub and we are currently partnered with many companies developing technologies for recovery of critical materials from eWaste and other recyclable materials. Due to the nature of many of our Non-Disclosure Agreements the name of the company and what their contributions have been to date are business-sensitive and confidential.

Yes, CMI is funded through DOE Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Office (AMMTO). DOE-Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) currently has been allocated $600M worth of R&D funding for critical minerals and materials in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). FECM is currently in the driver’s seat and is offering competitive grant funding through Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs). The latest FOA from FECM for critical materials R&D was DE-FOA-0003105 which closed in December 2023. It is purported that FECM will release another major FOA this Spring 2024 that will target critical materials R&D.