Ever wondered what makes your smartphone screen so bright and colorful? The secret lies in a group of special metals called rare earth elements (REEs). These elements turn invisible UV or blue light into the vivid reds, greens, and blues you see on your screen.
However, REEs do more than just light up your phone. They’re essential for making strong magnets, sharp displays, and efficient batteries that are key parts in smartphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and many other modern technologies.
However, current methods to extract REEs are highly complex, expensive, harmful to the environment, and not very efficient.
“Rare earth elements are the backbone of advanced technologies, but their extraction and purification are energy-intensive and extremely difficult to implement at the scales required,” Manish Kumar, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin (UTexas), said.
Kumar and his team have developed special artificial membrane channels that can overcome this problem and make REEs more accessible than ever. Here’s how this interesting innovation works.