The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Tellurium devices transform sunlight and heat into electricity. A hot engine and a cool breeze, a cozy living room on a cold winter day, or the warmth of sunshine on your face and the coolness of the earth beneath your feet – there are temperature variations all around. Devices capable of efficiently transforming these thermal dichotomies into clean electricity 24 hours a day without any moving parts would forever change the energy dynamics on Earth. While such a miraculous t...
From promising solid-state battery technology that could eliminate range anxiety for electric vehicle owners to solar panels and thermoelectric devices that transform sunshine and heat into low-carbon energy, tellurium is emerging as a secret ingredient of the clean energy future. "It has flown largely under the radar, even though it's essential for cadmium-telluride solar panels and new lithium-tellurium batteries that could revolutionize energy storage," said Tyrone... Full story
From antimony historically mined near the Interior Alaska city of Fairbanks to the zinc and germanium produced at the Red Dog Mine, America's 49th State is a past producer, and a potential future source of the minerals and metals deemed critical to the United States. Earlier this year U.S. Geological Survey updated and expanded its list of critical minerals to include 50 minerals and metals essential to the economic or national security of the U.S. and which has a supply... Full story
Rare metalloid is key element of CdTe thin-film solar cell tech The rising popularity of thin-film solar cells as a highly effective means of converting sunlight into electricity is creating increased demand for tellurium, amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table. Tellurium is a metalloid, one of seven elements with properties that fall between metals like aluminum and tin and non-metals like carbon and phosphorus. These semimetals, which also include...
Amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table and an important ingredient in the emerging thin-film solar panel sector, tellurium embodies what it means to be a critical metalloid – an element that possesses the properties of both a metal and non-metal. "Most rocks contain an average of about 3 parts per billion tellurium, making it rarer than the rare earth elements and eight times less abundant than gold," the United States Geological Survey wrote in a 2... Full story
Amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table and an important ingredient in the emerging thin-film solar panel sector, tellurium embodies what it means to be a metalloid – an element that possesses the properties of both a metal and non-metal – critical to the United States. "Most rocks contain an average of about 3 parts per billion tellurium, making it rarer than the rare earth elements and eight times less abundant than gold," the United States Geo... Full story
Extremely rare, yet a vital ingredient to emerging solar panel technologies, tellurium is the epitome of what it means to be a critical metalloid, an element that possesses the properties of both a metal and non-metal. "Most rocks contain an average of about 3 parts per billion tellurium, making it rarer than the rare earth elements and eight times less abundant than gold," the United States Geological Survey wrote in a 2015 report on this critical metalloid. "Grains of... Full story