![Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Ramesh Bhave co-invented a process to recover high-purity rare earth elements from scrapped magnets of computer hard drives (shown here) and other post-consumer wastes. Credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2019-08/01%20-%202019-P01551.jpg?h=036a71b7&itok=HiVIBieH)
Rare earth elements are the “secret sauce” of numerous advanced materials for energy, transportation, defense and communications applications.
Rare earth elements are the “secret sauce” of numerous advanced materials for energy, transportation, defense and communications applications.
The lighter wand for your gas BBQ, a submarine’s sonar device and the ultrasound machine at your doctor’s office all rely on piezoelectric materials, which turn mechanical stress into electrical energy, and vice versa.
Catalysts make chemical reactions more likely to occur. In most cases, a catalyst that’s good at driving chemical reactions in one direction is bad at driving reactions in the opposite direction.