Humans are animals with rather mediocre capacities compared to other species. We are neither particularly fast, nor robust, nor strong. Nor do we have wings, fins, claws, or fangs that allow us to move by these means or to be good hunters. However, even with these shortcomings, mankind has been able to dominate all environments, from the sky to the sea. This fact is due to the fact that, if we excel in one skill, it is our way of taking advantage of what the environment offers us to make up for our shortcomings.
If we look back to the Stone Age, the use of rock chips gave our ancestors claws, fangs, and molars outside the body. With these, they could hunt, tear through the skin of animals, tear flesh and crush hard seeds for food that would otherwise be inaccessible. With these new skills unlocked, early humans experimented with other materials such as bone, pottery and, later, metals.
With each new material that has come across the human being, a new possibility has appeared and, with each possibility, new problems to be solved which, in turn, required a new material or technique. After thousands of years of spinning, the wheel of innovation has brought us to a point where we humans use almost the entire periodic table to fulfil a specific function. However, some of these materials, which are necessary in the world we live in, are very scarce or difficult to access. For this reason, they are considered critical raw materials.
These materials are particularly relevant on a macroeconomic and geopolitical level, as they are often the main point of contention in trade agreements between countries. Their access and dependence have put the stability of certain regions at risk on more than one occasion and, in an increasingly tense climate, the solution is to stop being so dependent on these materials.
This is why hundreds of laboratories around the world are devoting much of their efforts to creating materials with similar properties to critical raw materials, but with readily available elements.
INSIDE. The unexplored face of the physical world
These are known as critical raw materials. a[U1] a number of materials listed by the European Commission that require special attention due to their economic importance, as well as the high risk that a disruption of their supply would pose to the European Union (EU). In total, the European Commission has identified 34 critical raw materials that play a fundamental role in our vision of a modern future.
A raw material is therefore considered critical if it meets two criteria:
- It is of great economic importance. This is a changing criterion and depends on the use of this material in strategic sectors of the EU.
- There is a supply risk. A factor that also depends on other conditions, such as the concentration of the material in a country or region outside the EU, the political stability of that region and its degree of recycling.
In particular, the EU established in 2023 that antimony, arsenic, bauxite, bauxite, barite, beryllium, bismuth, boron, cobalt, coking or metallurgical coal, copper, light rare earth elements, heavy rare earth elements, scandium, strontium, feldspar, fluorspar, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, natural graphite, hafnium, helium, lithium, magnesium, manganese, platinum group metals, niobium, nickel of sufficient purity for batteries, phosphate rock and phosphorus, silicon metal, tantalum, titanium metal, tungsten and vanadium.
Within these 34 materials, the 17 highlighted are also considered strategic, as they are key in the green transition and in all areas related to the defence industry. For this reason, it is believed that their demand will increase exponentially in the coming years, and may even exceed production. Following this scenario, two major risks associated with the future of their exploitation emerge, as can be seen in Graph 1. The first is the environmental problems derived from their search and extraction, which could affect the environment and food security in the places where there is the greatest concentration of these materials. And the second would be the political tensions generated by their demand, which could jeopardise the stability of certain countries or regions.
These potential conflicts have already been widely publicised in the media, and affect different critical and strategic materials, especially lithium. This material, essential for batteries, has already been a source of conflict between the US, China and other countries in the so-called «Lithium Triangle» in South America. The imposition of tariffs, as well as certain controversial measures by the United States to stop depending on the Asian giant, have led to a tense climate that has no simple solution.
Europe, on the other hand, is also in a delicate situation with lithium. Today, according to the Special Report on EU industrial policy for batteries, 87% of unrefined lithium comes from Australia, and the remaining 13% from Portugal. As for refined lithium, 79% of the supply to the EU comes from Chile, and the rest from Switzerland, Argentina and other countries.
However, bringing production closer to the EU is not a simple task. It is estimated that there are 27 potential deposits in nine countries: Czech Republic, Serbia, Ukraine, Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, Austria and Finland. With all these deposits, the reserves would amount to 8.8 million tonnes of lithium oxide and allow for lithium independence. However, there is only one European lithium mine in operation, located in Portugal, and it is under strong pressure not to increase production. Also, plans to open a mine in the Jadar valley in northern Serbia have been blocked by environmental groups and public pressure, which fear it will pollute the surrounding fertile areas and destroy ecosystems.
The problem is that everyone needs lithium, as well as other critical raw materials, but no one wants it to be extracted on their territory. Still on this material, two main techniques are used to obtain lithium: open-pit mines, where the rock is extracted directly for further processing, or pump-and-dump mines. In the latter, the rock is first excavated and then pumped with large quantities of water to create a brackish mixture, which is then taken to evaporation salt pans, where the lithium is concentrated and extracted for purification. Both methods require large tracts of land, so they end up having a major impact on the environment, hence the opposition from communities.
The lithium problem is just a sample of the other critical raw materials, whose future is not much brighter. As the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has already stressed on several occasions, the situation is very vulnerable. At the summit on the future of energy security on 24 April 2025, she said: “We need critical raw materials. You all know that in this room. This is even more important in the context of looming trade restrictions and export bans, we see that. These minerals are the building blocks of the clean transition. They are already being worked on.
For this reason, the EU has signed ten strategic raw materials agreements with partner countries. And it has launched the Clean Trade and Investment Partnership, a partnership with South Africa in which €4.7 billion will be invested in clean energy projects for the country in exchange for guaranteed access to key materials for the green transition such as lithium, cobalt or nickel.
However, the solution to the problem does not lie in moving farms elsewhere, but in giving all regions the possibility of obtaining these materials without being dependent on a single supplier. For this reason, the European Raw Materials Act has been promoted in recent years. This law has several objectives, including a number of targets to be achieved by 2030. For example, it stipulates that 10% of the EU's annual needs will be met by extraction, 40% by processing and 25% by recycling. In addition, a maximum dependence of 65% on the consumption of critical raw materials by third countries will be established.
In doing so, they aim to develop European capacities to achieve more robust routes and improve the resilience of supply chains. In addition, there are plans to invest in research into new technologies to improve the efficiency of extraction and processing of materials. Finally, one of the key elements of this law is to ensure a more circular economy, which allows for the recovery of these materials from waste. In this way, the aim is to mitigate the adverse effects on the environment.
However, a much more radical and interesting global strategy is also on the table. Completely replacing these critical raw materials with Earth Abundant Materials. That is to say, to establish as a goal that the industries of the future will use mostly or entirely materials that are not considered critical.
The earth's crust is made up of 46.1% of oxygen and 28.2% of silicon, mostly as part of silicates. After them, the next most abundant elements are aluminium and iron and, closing the top 10, are calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, titanium and hydrogen.
However, their abundance does not imply that they can be easily extracted and used. For this reason, two of these elements, magnesium and titanium, are also on the list of critical raw materials. In the case of magnesium, which is widely used in the automotive, aerospace and biomedical industries, it is on the list because of its dependence on China, where 99% of imports come from, and because for every tonne produced, more than six tonnes are imported, making Europe dependent.
In the case of titanium, it is a material that is also widely used in the aerospace industry and in defence, as well as being key in everyday devices, such as smartphones and computers, and in the generation of electrical energy. The problem with titanium is not so much its extraction, but its further processing, as only a small number of industries are able to produce titanium with the purities and conditions necessary for each of its uses. Most titanium comes from Japan, China, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Where is the key? Innovation. In trying to find new methods for both extraction and use. And this is where institutions, research centres and companies have to work hand in hand to carry out strategies to obtain the necessary resources with the minimum impact.
Against this backdrop, the scientists invited to the Nobel Symposium on Chemistry for Sustainability in the Stockholm Declaration on Chemistry for the Future have much to say in shaping the chemistry of the coming decades. In the declaration, the scientists call for a communion between chemistry, society and the environment, three areas that must go hand in hand to ensure a secure future. Therefore, it is written that “any innovation without taking sustainability into account would be ruinous”.
This phrase is perfectly reflected in the first of the five essential elements for sculpting the chemistry of the future: “we must ensure that the design, development and implementation of chemical products and processes is done in a way that integrates the goal of reducing or eliminating harm to people and planet from their conception. Our companies must ensure design for rapid and inherently safe degradation in the case of dispersed-use chemicals/materials, or design for disassembly in the case of products with the potential for circular use,” the statement says.
He adds: “Our chemical processes must evolve from the use of toxic, exhaustible, rare, persistent and explosive/flammable substances to healthy, renewable, distributed, abundant, non-reactive and degradable substances. Our manufacturing must evolve from efficient to effective, from centralised, single-purpose, built-to-last facilities to distributed, adaptive/dynamic, continuous and inherently safe.[i]
So the intention on the part of the sharpest minds is there. Ready to create; and this materialises in concrete projects that eliminate the use of critical raw materials.
Transition metal-mediated catalysis has been a revolution in chemical synthesis and has enabled both the study and creation of new metal complexes. Moreover, it is an essential part of carrying out chemical reactions that are now ubiquitous in academia and industry. This is why transition metal catalysis chemistry has been awarded the Nobel Prize on several occasions.
Four of the most recent have taken place in this century: in 2001, Ryoji Noyori and William S. Knowles received half the award for their work on asymmetric catalysis using rhodium and ruthenium, and the other half went to Barry Sharpless, for his work on catalysing chiral molecules by oxidation (including those using osmium and titanium); in 2005, Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs and Richard Schrock won the prize for their work on the metathesis of ruthenium and molybdenum; in 2010, Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for their work on palladium-catalysed cross-coupling; and in 2022, Morten Meldal and, again, Barry Sharpless received the prize for copper-catalysed click chemistry. This prize was awarded jointly with Bertozzi for their development of bioorthogonal click chemistry.
These studies do not remain mere theory, but have been widely adopted by industry, and thanks to them we can manufacture many of the objects we use every day more efficiently. Among the most important metal catalysts is palladium, which plays a key role in carbonyl acylations, which are often used in organic synthesis, and in the formation of C-C, C-N and C-O covalent bonds, formed by the sharing of electrons between atoms. Rhodium, ruthenium and platinum are used in hydrogenations (chemical reactions that add hydrogen to another compound using a catalyst).
All these catalysts are considered to be critical raw materials, so today one of the key issues is their substitution by others with similar properties and which are made of materials such as aluminium, iron, nickel or silicon. For this reason, analytical techniques are being used to understand the mechanisms by which catalysis can take place, and the transformation rates of the desired product.
Other industries are also taking steps to move away from dependence on critical raw materials. Among them, the solar photovoltaic energy production industry, the automotive industry and the defence industry stand out for their international importance.
In the solar photovoltaic industry, current advances are being made in perovskites. These are materials that, due to their configuration, allow higher efficiency in capturing sunlight compared to traditional silicon wafers. Several research groups claim to have succeeded in breaking the higher efficiency barrier of 30%. The improvement is more than 50% compared to current panels, which could further increase the adoption of this method of energy harvesting. However, challenges remain. Their lifetime, for example, is often shorter than that of wafers, and scalability is sometimes difficult.
In the case of the car industry, this is a controversial issue. It is estimated that vehicles are directly and indirectly responsible for about 25% of the world's CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and their emissions are expected to continue to increase over the next decade. To reduce their footprint, one of the keys is to maximise their efficiency without losing their capabilities. With the increasing adoption of electric vehicles, the R&D departments of automotive companies have focused their efforts on two lines of research: the reduction of vehicle weight and the efficiency and sustainability of electric vehicle batteries.
In terms of weight, there is increasing talk of “green iron”, i.e. materials that are lighter than traditional materials while retaining their properties. These are mostly aluminium alloys, magnesium or polymers reinforced with carbon fibre. By reducing weight, the energy needed to move the vehicle is also reduced, thus reducing fuel consumption and its impact on the environment.
In batteries, there is currently a great deal of interest in the use of ferrophosphate for the cathode of lithium batteries, instead of cobalt or nickel. The advantages are manifold. In terms of safety, for example, ferrophosphate is inherently more stable than its critical metal counterparts and therefore has a lower risk of fire or explosion. It also has a longer service life, can withstand higher power density and fast charging and discharging. In addition, the extraction of the materials needed for its construction is more environmentally friendly than those of nickel and cobalt, as iron is much more abundant.
In the defence industry, the atmosphere is rather more tense. The rollercoaster ride of international politics in recent years has led to a tense climate. As a result, access to some of the most widely used materials in the defence industry could become unavailable in the coming years. An assessment of raw materials used in defence found that at least 19 (beryllium, boron, dysprosium, germanium, gold, indium, magnesium, molybdenum, neodymium, niobium, praseodymium, a group of other rare earths, samarium, tantalum, thorium, titanium, vanadium, zirconium and yttrium) the EU is more than 50% dependent on imports. They could therefore be disrupted by changes in the producing countries.
China is the main producer of one third of the above raw materials and the supply risk for raw materials produced in China is currently considered to be high. Potential deposits in different EU countries are therefore being investigated, as well as a diversification of importing countries so that supplies can be secured in the event of restrictions.
Today's challenge with critical materials goes beyond simply securing the supply of essential minerals; it is about reinventing the way we interact with our natural resources in a context of sustainability and circular economy. Excessive dependence on a few exporting countries not only restricts industrial autonomy, but also puts at risk the fulfilment of the climate and technology commitments that today set the international agenda. In this sense, there is a need to develop sustainable and abundant alternatives that allow for cleaner extraction and processing, with a focus on innovation and respect for the environment.
This global challenge implies transforming traditional extraction methods, incorporating emerging technologies that minimise environmental impact, promoting recycling and reuse of materials, and establishing public-private partnerships to promote research and development projects. At the same time, geopolitical competition underscores the urgency of creating international cooperation models that ensure greater resilience to supply crises. The convergence of these factors articulates not only an opportunity to redesign the industry of the future, but also an ethical and strategic commitment to drive sustainability and reduce inequalities in access to critical resources.
IN ACTION. Reinvesting the materials of the new economy
The chemical industry has become one of the largest sectors of the world economy, with annual revenues of around 4.3 trillion euros (close to Germany's GDP) and more than 15 million workers. 25% of the US economy depends on chemistry, a sector that the US has long been a global leader, although there is no shortage of doubts that it can continue to do so in view of changing trends. Activities as diverse as health care systems, packaging, agriculture, textiles, automotive, construction... 96% of manufactured goods require the chemical industry.. The 80% of today's industry consists mainly of five materials: steel, coal, gold, copper and aluminium; however, the production of basic chemical intermediates, such as ammonia, methanol, ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, toluene, xylene, directly affects almost every aspect of the global economy. Therefore, unless the chemical system transitions to a sustainable operating model, it will be difficult for the other sectors that use its products to truly achieve this.
Despite the 8% drop in chemical industry revenues in 2023, against a difficult backdrop of plant closures in Europe[ii] and regionalisation in the manufacturing of some products, their capital and R&D expenditures grew by 6% and 2%, respectively. In both cases, they are driven, on the one hand, by digital-age technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, 3D printing and materials informatics, including machine learning, simulations and, eventually, quantum computing. Proposals such as the Materials Genome Initiative have, for example, for the past decade sought to leverage these to broaden the range of advanced materials and accelerate time to market.[iii].
Alongside this, innovation in the chemicals sector is being driven by an increased focus on sustainability and the need to adapt to changing customer preferences. More than 1,700 companies and financial institutions globally have announced net zero emissions commitments, and 59% of executives surveyed by Deloitte say their companies have started to use sustainable materials, such as recycled and lower-emission sourced materials.[iv].
The concern is justified because it is estimated that critical metals could experience high price increases until 2035, in particular palladium, iridium and nickel will rise by 165%, 140% and 107%, respectively, and other materials, under a scenario of an average annual inflation rate of 2% over the next decade, could see their price soar by 24%.
The criticality of palladium will intensify, and is vital for the automotive catalytic industry (83% of global demand) and the chemical sector (6%). Global demand for iridium could reach 20 tonnes/year in 2040, far from the 6.8 t/year production in 2022. Its role is especially relevant in emerging green technologies, particularly for hydrogen production, but its recycling rate is only 14%. Despite its wide availability and the fact that global nickel production is more dispersed, global competition for this material will most likely intensify in the near future. It has critical applications in steel production and in the automotive and battery industries, and demand from the cleantech industry will grow by more than 30% in a business-as-usual scenario and by around 60% on a trajectory aligned with the Paris Agreement targets in 2040, compared to 10% in 2022.
The battle is not only over the availability of raw materials, but also over the technologies to process them and make them available for commercial use. China banned the export of rare earth processing technologies in December 2023 and increased its investments in overseas mine acquisitions to 10 billion euros, with a particular focus on battery metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.
On the road to economic and environmental sustainability, one of the major innovation challenges for the global chemical industry will be to find new alternatives to so-called critical raw materials. In 2023, the EU awarded such a classification to 34 materials, based on their economic importance and supply risk, as well as their relevance for both the digital and energy transition and for defence and space applications. This approach resulted in a second list of 17 strategic raw materials in which copper and nickel were included, even though their supply is well diversified.
There is a third way that envisages the transition to «circular raw materials».»[v], a paradigm complementary to the previous ones and governed by the reduction of waste, the extension of the life cycle of products and the recycling of materials. Figure 3 shows the opportunities that are opening up in this respect. The European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA), led by EIT RawMaterials, already has more than 750 members, with a total investment potential of around 50 billion euros, and claims to have the capacity to close the gap between EU raw materials supply and demand between 20% and 100% across a wide range of critical and strategic raw materials.[vi].
Finding a solution to the criticality of raw materials is an imperative for Europe, which is pushing for different ways of working, including the substitution of those currently used in many processes and products by others based on more abundant materials. This may be the most interesting option because only 7.3% of annual demand in the EU is met by recycling waste.[vii], In fact, most critical raw materials have an EOL-RIR (end-of-life recycling input rate) of less than 5%. As long as this percentage does not increase and alternatives are not found, dependency will continue to grow.
Half of the copper produced is being discarded right now and that's hard to digest for fast-growing sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI), data centres, clean energy technologies and electric vehicles, for which demand could increase by 50% by 2040. In 2022 alone, approximately 64 million tonnes of copper-intensive electronics were produced worldwide, but only 14 million tonnes (22%) were recycled. This means that the carbon dioxide emitted during copper production will continue to increase, even though, with appropriate technological development, experts believe it could be reduced by up to 85%.
Some individual products, such as LED lights, contain only tiny amounts of these materials. However, the large volume of e-waste represents a significant waste of critical raw materials. Moreover, current recycling processes are incompatible with each other, and only one of these three groups can be recovered separately in each case: indium and gallium; rare earths (europium, gadolinium, terbium and yttrium); and silver, gold and palladium. For other critical raw materials, such as lithium, recycling technologies simply do not yet exist or are not feasible due to their high cost. In fact, lithium-ion batteries are mainly recovered from cobalt, which is the most expensive material.
The rapid adoption of electric vehicles in Europe opens a window of opportunity, because it is accelerating the phase-out of conventional vehicles to reduce CO₂ emissions until 2035. Platinum used today in automotive catalysts could be an interesting source of secondary raw materials for the manufacture of electrolysers from 2030 onwards. The Clean Hydrogen Alliance has decided to fund research projects in this direction. There are paradoxical circumstances: the space sector is fuelled by noble gases and helium, an area in which Europe has a strong industrial capacity, with companies such as Linde and AirLiquide. However, crude helium is very sensitive to the geopolitical context, as supply is concentrated in just three countries: Qatar, Russia and Algeria, which account for 60% of world production. Similarly, annual ammonia production, led by China, Russia, the United States and India, will increase from 235 million cubic metres in 2019 to 290 million metric tonnes by the end of 2030, due to huge population growth and advancing industrialisation.
The Draghi Report has addressed the issue of alternatives to critical raw materials in depth. It recommends that the EU should develop an industrial roadmap that takes into account horizontal convergence (electrification, digitalisation and circularity) and vertical convergence (strategic resources, batteries, transport infrastructure and charging) of value chains in the automotive ecosystem. The EU could cover more than half to three quarters of its metal needs for clean technologies by 2050 through local recycling, he adds, and recommends establishing a true Single Market for waste and circularity. A relevant fact to consider that is not usually associated with the new materials issue is that projections indicate that the raw materials sector will need 1.2 million skilled professionals by 2030.
The EU has decided to support these dynamics with the adoption of regulations such as the Critical Raw Materials Act, which sets targets for 2030 such as reaching an extraction capacity equivalent to 10% of annual EU consumption, a processing capacity of 40% and a recycling capacity of 25% of annual consumption of strategic raw materials, compared to 11% today. In addition, the EU should not be dependent on a single third country for more than 65% of the supply of a critical raw material by 2030. The law also calls on member states to implement shorter permitting times for what it calls “Strategic Projects”: 27 months for extraction permits and 15 months for processing, compared to processes that currently take three to five times longer.
This is complemented by other regulations such as the Battery Regulation, which requires a minimum recycled content for new batteries, and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directives or the Action Plan for the New Circular Economy. Finally, when assessing the criticality of industrially relevant materials, the European Commission takes into account socio-economic, environmental and geopolitical factors affecting their availability and use. For example, an electric vehicle will require approximately six times more mineral inputs than a current internal combustion engine vehicle, and an onshore wind power plant will require nine times more minerals than a gas-fired power plant of similar size.
The need to secure the supply of critical raw materials is seen as one of the reasons behind the renaissance of industrial policies worldwide, including calls for reindustrialisation in the EU. It is paradoxical, in that sense, that ongoing projects funded through Horizon Europe related to critical raw materials focus mainly on recycling and recovery. Batteries, catalysts and capacitors are the most researched technologies, while magnets for wind turbines and solar panels seem to be under-represented. The critical raw materials most addressed in Horizon Europe projects are cobalt, lithium, platinum group metals, nickel and manganese. Only Zambia and South Africa are considered for cooperation as non-European countries, while Finland, Greece and Portugal have the largest concentration of demonstration projects and pilot technologies.
An interesting approach advocates designing products that require a more efficient use of materials, for example by reducing the load of precious metals used in catalysts. The concept of «Design for Circularity» rethinks the whole life cycle of products in this new approach. Smartphones use 31 elements (some sources put this figure at around 70) that often need to be replaced when changing devices, i.e. more quickly than necessary, as their perspective is not reusability.
In proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers, which are used to generate oxygen and hydrogen from water, single-atom catalysts, nanoparticles or extended surface structures could be used, which not only imply lower prices, but also enable new functions and features. Recent use has also been found of single-atom catalysts for the synthesis of a variety of fine chemicals. However, a holistic approach from the scientific community is needed to facilitate investment and their potential integration into various chemical industries, such as food (flavourings and fragrances) and pharmaceuticals (prodrugs and intermediates in the synthesis of various active pharmaceutical ingredients).
Alongside efforts to improve product design to make more optimal use of materials, advanced manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, offer an interesting complementary route, as they allow more precise use of materials at lower energy costs. Support can also be found in the increasingly common product-as-a-service models in the economy. By retaining ownership in the hands of the manufacturer, longevity, reuse and renewal of raw materials, rather than replacement, can be promoted. This approach, already common in transport, could be applied more widely in other sectors such as lighting, printing or electronics.
And, of course, artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling a quantum leap in the search for new materials. US technology companies teamed up with several federal research labs to use AI to develop a new material that could reduce the lithium content in batteries by 70%. One of those involved was Microsoft, which has launched Azure Quantum Elements to accelerate scientific discovery with the power of AI, cloud computing and, eventually, large-scale quantum computers. It has worked with companies such as Johnson Matthey, 1910 Genetics and AkzoNobel, among others. His AI models have digitally analysed more than 32 million potential materials and found more than 500,000 stable candidates for a new solid-state battery electrolyte.[viii]. Google DeepMind's GNoME models have discovered more than 2.2 million stable structures to augment the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD). As the discovered materials compete for stability, the updated convex envelope now contains 381,000 new entries for a total of 421,000 stable crystals, representing an order of magnitude expansion of all previous discoveries.[ix].
Replacing critical raw materials with less critical materials ultimately remains the key strategy. Much progress is being made in this regard. The production of electrolysers to generate hydrogen requires at least 40 feedstocks and the EU currently produces only between 1% and 5%.[x]. For long-term stationary energy storage, redox flow batteries are a possible solution. The replacement of vanadium electrolyte with zinc or, preferably, iron electrolytes is being investigated. The continued development of new battery chemistries offers an exciting field of innovation, with promises such as solid electrolytes and sodium anodes. Although these emerging technologies may not be adopted on a large scale in second or even third generation car models for another 10 to 15 years, they are likely to be adopted in the future.[xi]. Ferrite-based alternatives to magnets in electric vehicle motors and wind turbines that contain rare earth elements (REE), such as neodymium-iron-boron, are also being sought. The most famous example has been the replacement of lithium-ion batteries based on nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) in Tesla cars with lithium-ion batteries based on lithium iron phosphate (LFP).[xii].
Instead of replacing materials linked to clean energy technologies that have already reached a high level of maturity, the transition to fully alternative technologies is also being considered. This is the case for perovskites in photovoltaics, provided that the lifetime challenge can be solved, a problem similar to that of organic photovoltaics. Antimony selenide is a very promising material with the potential to become a competitive alternative to traditional technologies based on silicon, cadmium telluride and CIGS (a semiconductor material composed of copper, indium, gallium and selenium). Thin-film photovoltaics also raises high expectations from an industrial perspective, but is affected by the scarcity of tellurium, indium and gallium in the earth's crust, coupled with the toxicity of cadmium.
As for alternative technologies for water electrolysis, most need to improve in scalability, as do airborne wind and ocean energy. Enercon's multipole synchronous generators and General Electric's superconductor-based generators are examples of emerging alternative technology solutions to magnets. SpaceX decided to use silicon solar cells supplied by Taiwan Solar Energy Corporation (TSEC) for its Starlink constellation even though they have traditionally been used in terrestrial applications, a decision that is not without risk.
Advanced materials, storage and conversion solutions can generate double-digit savings in the clean energy sector[xiii]. In addition, losses in power electronics systems could be reduced by about half through the introduction of WBG semiconductors (WBG).Wide Bandgap), which would lead to a significant decrease in the amount of materials needed, including critical raw materials, and favour the miniaturisation of devices. The expansion of DC (direct current) networks to higher and higher voltages will also reduce the materials needed for network expansion, as they are much more efficient than AC (alternating current) transmission lines with the same material consumption. In addition, new technologies for medium frequency galvanic isolation of grid sections can achieve material savings in excess of 90% compared to transformers operating at the prevailing frequencies of 50/60 Hz.[xiv].
Another line of chemical research work is aimed at substituting less abundant metals in the earth, such as palladium or platinum, with more common ones such as cobalt or manganese. Essentially this is no more than moving from one critical raw material to another, in effect, but the availability of an element and security of supply, usually associated with diversified sourcing, are key to mitigating commercial risk. The same is true for phosphorus, silicon, carbon, aluminium and titanium. Christina Wegeberg, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark, is investigating whether it is possible to use manganese in light harvesting and potentially in solar energy conversion. Her project follows on from an earlier project in which an excited-state lifetime of 50 nanoseconds was achieved for chromium.
The development of photoactivated materials could also allow industry to carry out complex synthetic reactions under mild conditions, harnessing the energy of sunlight, opening up new possibilities for the modification of biomolecules. The latter, which include everything from DNA to proteins to carbohydrates, are very delicate and complex structures. The aggressive conditions of traditional chemistry can destroy or modify them in undesirable ways. By being able to carry out reactions under mild conditions thanks to photoactivated materials, they can be manipulated and modified in a controlled and precise way, which has great potential in fields such as medicine, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. The increased energy input from photoactivated materials could also facilitate the breakdown of undesirable chemicals that would otherwise be difficult to remove, such as in water purification applications. In this respect, phosphorus-containing derivatives are common in many areas of everyday life, including medicine and drug discovery, materials sciences, in particular for electronic properties, and agriculture and crop protection.[xv].
Innovation in the field of new materials can also range from the development of new alloys to the creation of new sustainable composites and biomaterials. In the first case, caution must be exercised, because it has been shown that the supply risk increases with the number of elements involved in the alloy and can quickly exceed that associated with the element being replaced.[xvi]. In the second case, it is estimated that nature-based solutions in the chemical sector can contribute up to 37% to the emission reductions needed by 2030.[xvii] and more than 40% of investments in circular innovation are related to bio-based materials or recycling of raw materials.
IN SPAIN. The leap in chemistry: from the laboratory to the marketplace
Spain is the third country in Europe with the most mining resources.[xviii], The Spanish mining industry, with around 2,700 active exploitations, has consolidated metal mining as its main activity. They also extract other materials that may not be critical for the EU, but are of enormous importance for the Spanish economy, from industrial minerals (feldspar, magnesite, potash, kaolin, celestine, and special clays including attap ulgite, sepiolite and bentonite), to ornamental rocks (limestones and marbles, granites and roofing slates) and quarry products (gypsum, marls, sands and gravels).
A report by the Congressional Office of Science and Technology highlights that Spain is the second largest producer of copper ore and the only producer of strontium within the EU, responsible for 34% of the global supply of this metal to the EU. Spain also produces feldspar, wolfram, silicon metal, fluorspar and tantalum, and has deposits of antimony, barite, bismuth, cobalt, lithium and rare earths, mostly located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Iberian Pyrite Belt has the highest concentration of massive sulphides. For the future, Spain is studying around 40 metal mining projects in various stages of development or at a standstill. Mineral processing and refining capacity is mainly focused on copper, aluminium and zinc.
As regards the strategic lines related to advanced materials, promoted by the central government, they appear both in the proposed Long-Term Strategy for a Modern, Competitive and Climate Neutral Spanish Economy in 2050 and in the Spanish Circular Economy Strategy, Spain Circular 2030. In both cases, the reduction of consumption and the promotion of repair, reuse and recycling activities are promoted so that secondary raw materials can satisfy a greater part of the demand for minerals.
Seven autonomous communities have joined the Advanced Materials Programme. These are Aragon, Catalonia, Castile-Leon, Valencia, Madrid, the Basque Country and Castile-La Mancha.[xix]. They undertake to collaborate in research and innovation in order to deploy a joint R&D&I strategy based on the promotion of synergies between research centres, technology centres and companies. The programme envisages two types of interconnected actions: in the field of research actions, it proposes the study of nanomaterials with advanced functionalities, including graphene and other 2D materials, intelligent materials and nanostructured materials with direct application in strategic sectors such as energy, the environment, electronics, ICTs and health. In terms of integration and collaboration actions, the autonomous communities will collaborate in visibility and dissemination, training and joint research and innovation actions.
Among the recent milestones of our research network, the international collaboration led by Professor Dominik Kraus from the University of Rostock and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, involving professors from the ICMUV (Institute of Materials Sciences of the University of Valencia), which is part of the Advanced Materials Programme, stands out. The project used the DIPOLE 100-X high-performance laser to study liquid carbon in the European XFEL, the world's largest X-ray laser, which can be considered an unprecedented achievement.
Future technologies such as nuclear fusion could make use of liquid carbon, which is probably found in the interior of the icy giant planets. This is a scientific and technological breakthrough because it was virtually impossible until now to study it in the laboratory at ambient pressure. Extreme pressure and enormous temperatures of 4,500 degrees Celsius were needed, until laser compression has managed to convert solid carbon into liquid for fractions of a second in which measurements can be made. In Spain, entities such as MATERPLAT, the Spanish Technological Platform for Advanced Materials and Nanomaterials, which represents more than 250 organisations, are responsible for promoting R&D in advanced materials, with initiatives such as the Advanced Materials Complementary Plan, focused on nanomaterials such as graphene for energy, health, electronics and the environment. For their part, institutions such as the ALBA Synchrotron and ICN2 also organise the Advanced Materials Conference in Spain. The former hosts the new research infrastructure InCAEM (In situ correlative facility for advanced energetic materials) in which centres such as ICN2, ICMAB-CSIC and IFAE-PIC are also involved.
[i] Feringa, B., García Martínez, J., et al. (2025) ‘Stockholm Declaration on the Chemistry of the Future’.’. Stockholm: Committee of the Nobel Symposium and Stockholm University Center for Circular and Sustainable Systems (SUCCeSS) (Accessed 18/06/2025).
[ii] Will Beacham, Corinne de Berry, “Cracker closures: facing the inevitable”, ICIS, n. d.
[iii] 2025 Chemical Industry Outlook, Deloitte, 4 November 2024
[iv] David Yankovitz et al., “The future of materials”, Deloitte, 2 June 2023, accessed on 10/05/2025.
[v] Joost M. van Gaalen, J. Chris Slootweg, From Critical Raw Materials to Circular Raw Materials, ChemSusChem, 22 October 2024, accessed on 08/05/2025
[vi] https://eitrawmaterials.eu/position-fp-10
[vii] A Circular European Critical Raw Materials Management System: The 2023 Playbook, Circular Innovation Lab, 2023.
[viii] Nathan Baker, “Unlocking a new era for scientific discovery with AI: How Microsoft's AI screened over 32 million candidates to find a better battery”, Microsoft, 9 January 2024, accessed 09/05/2025.
[ix] Amil Merchant et al, Scaling deep learning for materials discovery, Nature, 29 November 2023, accessed on 09/05/2025. doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06735-9
[x] Mario Draghi, “The future of European competitiveness”, European Commission, September 2024
[xi] Juan Merlini, Ricardo Monte Alto, “Metals for mobility: How mining can meet electric vehicle demand and support the energy transition”, World Economic Forum, 12 February 2025.
[xii] Jan Merten et al. From emissions to resources: mitigating the critical raw material supply chain vulnerability of renewable energy technologies, Mineral Economics, 20 February 2024, accessed on 09/05/2024, doi.org/10.1007/s13563-024-00425-2
[xiii] Materials for Energy Storage and Conversion A European Call for Action, EIT Raw Materials, ERMA, European Commission, 2023
[xiv] “Securing sustainable critical raw material supply for clean energy in Europe”, EERA, 2023.
[xv] Yumeng Yuan, Christophe Darcel, Earth Abundant Transition Metal Catalysts: New and Efficient Tools for Hydrophosphination and Oxyphosphination of Alkenes and Alkynes, ChemCatChem, 27 May 2024, doi.org/10.1002/cctc.202400703
[xvi] François Rousseau et al. Is alloying a promising path to substitute critical raw materials?, Materials Today, April 2025, doi.org/10.1016/j.mattod.2025.01.015
[xvii] “Nature Positive: Role of the Chemical Sector”, World Economic Forum, Oliver Wyman, April 2024.
[xviii] “Critical Materials and Raw Materials in the Energy Transition”, Congressional Office of Science and Technology, 29 October 2024, doi.org/10.57952/gbrz-xn19.
[xix] https://www.materialesavanzados.es/
[U1]We have already used this term but we define it now.