Critical Materials Innovation Hub Research Highlights

Critical materials periodic table

CMI research produced a Critical Materials Periodic Table. Every element includes market pricing, supplier information, U.S. import reliance, and crustal abundance.

Lithium purification from leachate solution

CMI research at Idaho National Laboratory demonstrated Li2CO3 recovery, with a Li purity over 90 percent, from a leachate surrogate sample containing Li and Mn.

Diagram of a lithium purification process developed by CMI

Publication on electrochemical leaching process developed by CMI

CMI research on an electrochemical leach process developed by researchers at Idaho National Laboratory were formulated into a technical paper accepted by a journal.

An economic assessment of the dissolution unit step was compared to other dissolution chemistries and found that the OPEX was lower while having a greater CAPEX.

Contribution to book on gallium oxide and related alloys

CMI research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been published in a book chapter summarizing state-of-the-art theoretical understanding of point defects in gallium oxide

Survey of donor dopants reported

Characterization of suitable donor dopants in ultrawide bandgap (Alx,Ga1-x)2O3 (AlGO)

Calculated charge-state transition levels for candidate donor dopants shown with respect to the conduction band edge in (AlxGa1-x)2O3 alloys, shown as a function of Al content.

Ionic liquid molecular interaction study

CMI research erformed 2D NMR and theoretical calculations on Trihexyl(tetradecyl)phosphonium dicyanamide (Solvay product Cyphos IL 105) to model the strength of the intra and intermolecular forces in the ionic liquids.

Development of permanent magnets using low cost mischmetal

CMI research at Ames Laboratory used high-throughput (HiTp) synthesis and rapid characterization to identify permanent magnet alloy compositions with decreased critical material content, and was accepted for publication in ACS Combinatorial Science.

High-throughput (HiTp) synthesis and rapid characterization was used to identify permanent magnet alloy compositions with decreased critical material content.

Automated fastener classification and identification system

CMI research at ORNL has demonstrated the ability to determine the size and type of several unknown fasteners from automobile drivetrains using an image processing system.

Calibration image scale with respect to a known dimension

A comparison of lithium-ion battery feedstocks

We have demonstrated that our EC leaching process efficiently leaches feedstocks with variable compositions.

Functionalizing magnet additive manufacturing systems with in-situ magnetic field source

CMI technical publication on functionalizing permanent magnet additive manufacturing systems with a magnetic field source. The field source was modeled, designed, prototyped and tested on an existing table-top commercial 3D printer.

Depiction of the magnetic-field aligning permanent magnet-producing apparatus, side view.