A new discovery from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin could change how we gather rare earth elements—essential materials used in electric vehicles, smartphones, wind turbines, and other advanced technologies.
The team has created a cleaner, more efficient way to separate and extract these valuable elements, which are often difficult and expensive to obtain.
Rare earth elements are grouped into light, middle, and heavy categories, each with unique uses.
Middle rare earth elements, such as europium and terbium, are especially important for making magnets used in green technologies, as well as in lighting and displays like TVs and LED lights.
However, these elements are currently hard to extract and purify, especially in an environmentally friendly way.
To tackle this challenge, researchers looked to nature for inspiration. In our bodies, cells use special proteins in their membranes to let certain ions in while keeping others out.
These proteins act like tiny gatekeepers, allowing only specific substances to pass through. Mimicking this idea, the team developed artificial membrane channels—tiny pores that control which ions can move through.
These new channels use a structure called pillararene that has been modified to be highly selective.
The channels are designed to let certain rare earth elements, like europium and terbium, pass through while blocking common ions like sodium, potassium, and calcium. The result is a system that is far more selective than traditional chemical methods, which often require multiple steps and harsh chemicals.
In lab tests, the channels showed a strong preference for middle rare earth elements.
For example, they were 40 times more likely to transport europium over lanthanum (a light rare earth element) and 30 times more likely to transport europium over ytterbium (a heavy rare earth element).
These results are promising for building better systems to separate these materials.
Using advanced computer models, the researchers found that the channels work so well because of how they interact with water molecules surrounding the ions. These water-based interactions help the channels tell different ions apart, even when they are chemically similar.
With global demand for rare earth elements expected to skyrocket—especially with the rise of green energy—the team believes this new approach could help the U.S. and other countries reduce their dependence on imported materials. The technology could eventually be scaled up for industrial use and adapted to extract other important minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel.
By learning from nature, this research offers a path toward more sustainable and secure supplies of the critical materials that power our modern world.
