Rare Metals

A silvery platinum-group metal that turns exhaust into cleaner air. Actively traded, with a liquid futures market and demand tied to every gasoline engine on the road.

A brittle, silvery metalloid that most people have never heard of and almost everyone relies on. It keeps plastics from burning, hardens lead in batteries, and turns up in ammunition and chips.

The metal with the highest melting point of any element. Nearly as dense as gold and, as tungsten carbide, hard enough to cut steel. Everything from drill bits to armor depends on it.

The rare earth behind the strongest permanent magnets ever made. Neodymium magnets sit inside electric motors, wind turbines, hard drives, headphones, and guided weapons. Not rare in the ground, but very rare in refined form outside China.

Denser than gold and far scarcer. All the platinum ever mined would fit in a modest living room. It cleans diesel exhaust, powers hydrogen fuel cells, and refines the fuel in your car.

The rarest and most volatile of the platinum group. Only about one million ounces are mined a year, almost all as a by-product. Its price has swung from under 1,000 to nearly 30,000 dollars an ounce within a decade.

The most corrosion-resistant metal known and one of the densest. Global output is only a few tonnes a year. It is the key ingredient in the electrolyzers that make green hydrogen.

A soft metal that melts in your hand and makes the fastest chips on earth. Gallium nitride and gallium arsenide power 5G radios, fast chargers, radar, and the lasers in data centers.

A brittle, silvery metalloid that is transparent to infrared light. It is what night-vision goggles, thermal cameras, and fiber-optic cables see through, and it boosts the efficiency of satellite solar panels.

One of the rarest elements in the earth's crust, with the third highest melting point of any metal. A few percent of rhenium in a nickel superalloy lets jet turbine blades run hotter and longer.