Critical Minerals & Materials

Critical minerals are the building blocks of modern technology, national security, and clean energy systems - yet, they are often in limited supply or concentrated in a few regions.

Overview
Technology Gaps
Roadmaps & Resources
Conferences

What are Critical Minerals and Materials?

The Energy Act of 2020 defines a “critical mineral” as:

Any non-fuel mineral, element, substance, or material that the Secretary of Energy determines: (i) has a high risk of supply chain disruption; and (ii) serves an essential function in one or more energy technologies, including technologies that produce, transmit, store, and conserve energy; or

A critical mineral, as defined by the Secretary of the Interior.

The Secretary of Energy determines the Critical Materials List, which includes materials for energy as well as critical minerals:

Critical Minerals

Critical minerals includes the following 50 minerals: Aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, praseodymium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, and zirconium.

The Department of Energy published the following medium-term (2025–2035) criticality matrix:

Source: U.S. Department of Energy

Why are they critical?

Critical minerals are the building blocks of modern technology, national security, and clean energy systems – yet, they are often in limited supply or concentrated in a few regions, creating vulnerability in global supply chains.

National Security: Many defense systems, including jets, missiles, satellites, and communications gear, rely on critical minerals such as rare earth elements, titanium, and beryllium for performance and durability. Secure access to these materials is vital for military readiness and technological superiority.

Clean Energy Transition: Critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earths are essential for batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles.

Economic Competitiveness: Nations that can produce, process, or recycle critical minerals gain strategic economic leverage while avoiding dependence on imports.

Technological Innovation: Smartphones, semiconductors, advanced sensors, and other high-tech products depend on critical minerals because their unique properties enable smaller, faster, and more efficient devices.

Supply Chain Resilience: Because extraction and refining are often geographically concentrated, supply disruptions can ripple through entire industries — from automotive to defense to energy.

Technology Gaps

Extraction and Processing

Technology gaps for rare earth elements (REEs) contribute to vulnerabilities in the global supply chain, and exist from the extraction phase through their processing and recycling. The development of alternative materials is also considered a technology gap.

Separating REEs from one another is a complex, high-energy, costly process – due to their having such similar chemical properties. Traditional REE processing uses vast amounts of toxic chemicals, and the process often generates radioactive and hazardous waste.

Promising new extraction and separation methods exist at the laboratory scale and primarily include the use of solvents or supercritical CO2. Bio-based extraction, including biomining with microbes, is also a potential approach under development. While ongoing research utilizing these methods focuses on safer, more sustainable alternatives to traditional processes, the technology for large-scale, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly production is not yet scalable.

Recycling

Many REE recycling processes are not economically feasible. In fact, recycling REEs from end-of-life products can actually be more expensive than mining for raw material, due to the low concentration of REEs in most consumer devices. Because REEs are used in such miniscule amounts that are closely integrated into complex electronic and magnet components, extracting them requires manual disassembly, which is highly labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Current recycling technologies use high heat and/or harsh chemicals, which are inefficient and can be harmful to the environment. Technology gaps for recycling include the need for more advanced sorting and molecular separation techniques.

Other Gaps

REE refining also faces gaps in technical expertise and the specialized infrastructure it requires. Currently, even if REEs are mined in the U.S., the raw material is often sent overseas for processing.