Critical minerals and materials (CMMs)—such as aluminum, copper, lithium, cobalt, and titanium—serve crucial functions in U.S. energy infrastructure; however, they also carry a high risk of supply chain disruption, often because of limited supply or a reliance on foreign imports.

In addition to increasing domestic extraction and recovery of those CMMs, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL or Lab) are working to further secure CMM supply chains by using advanced manufacturing, next-generation technologies, and new, superior materials that reduce the demand for CMMs.

Developing technologies that require less CMM content

For key CMM use cases, PNNL researchers are developing new technologies that require less CMM content than conventional designs. For instance, PNNL has produced fundamental breakthroughs in materials science and battery design that enable batteries made with more Earth-abundant materials, such as lithium metal and lithium-sulfur batteries advanced by the PNNL-led Battery500 Consortium, sodium-ion batteries advanced by the LENS Consortium, or sodium-iron chloride flow batteries—all of which require significantly less CMM content compared to their conventional counterparts.

Creating new materials that reduce the need for CMMs

PNNL researchers are also leveraging innovative techniques to produce materials and catalysts using Earth-abundant materials instead of CMMs. By understanding the fundamental properties of different molecules and materials, researchers can find new solutions that reduce our need for CMMs.

For example, PNNL researchers have used advanced manufacturing techniques—friction consolidation and friction stir forging—to enable bulk production of high-performance magnets using samarium, iron, and nitrogen. The SmFeN magnets are similarly performant to state-of-the-art neodymium-iron-boron magnets but require much less CMM content.

In some cases, PNNL researchers in the Lab’s Smart Advanced Manufacturing (SAM) program have even been able to use advanced processing methods to improve the functionality and performance of materials. For instance, researchers have leveraged Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion (ShAPE™) to create ultra-conductors, which are materials that combine copper or aluminum with nanocrystalline additives (such as graphene or carbon nanotubes), creating materials with improved electrical conductivity relative to pure copper or aluminum. Because the ultra-conductors are more conductive than those pure CMMs, less CMM content is required to achieve equivalent performance for key applications like motors, transmission lines, and transformers.

Leveraging advanced manufacturing to enable use of alternative materials

PNNL is also reducing the need for CMMs by developing advanced manufacturing technologies and techniques that can upcycle low-grade materials—such as scrap metal—to match the performance of the high-grade CMMs typically required in key infrastructure. For example, PNNL researchers have successfully applied ShAPE to create upcycled aluminum scrap with physical properties at or above industry standards with no need for additional primary aluminum—which, when scaled, could enable the repurposing of vast amounts of low-cost domestic scrap aluminum, reducing the need for costly foreign imports.

Learn more

To learn more about CMM replacement and reduction, read the Lab’s explainer article here. Of course, not every CMM can be reduced or replaced; to ensure secure supply chains for those materials, PNNL also conducts research in CMM supply chain modeling and CMM separations and recovery.