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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (73219)	4/11/2010 11:13:14 PM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Like the REEs, indium is another rare material that has seen its production somewhat monopolized by China in recent years. Indium is used in copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cells, but now IBM claims to have found a substitute approach... Made in IBM Labs: IBM Sets World Record by Creating High-Efficiency Solar Cell Made from Earth-Abundant Materials Breakthrough holds potential to deliver more energy at a fraction of the cost www-03.ibm.com ARMONK, N.Y. - 11 Feb 2010: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has built a solar cell -- where the key layer that absorbs most of the light for conversion into electricity, is made entirely of readily-available elements -- that set a new world record for efficiency and holds potential for enabling solar cell technology to produce more energy at a lower cost. Comprised of copper (Cu), tin (Sn), zinc (Zn), sulfur (S), and/or selenium (Se), the cell's power conversion demonstrates an efficiency of 9.6 percent -- 40 percent higher than the value previously attained for this set of materials.

To: Snowshoe who wrote (73219)	4/24/2010 10:12:04 AM
From: Snowshoe	Respond to of 74559

Congress considers effort to counter Chinese REE monopoly... Rare Earth Materials Facing Supply Chain Crisis U.S. government says that rebuilding of a competitive domestic supply chain could take up to 15 years. industryweek.com Mining News: Bill urges ‘restart’ of U.S. REEs mining Colorado lawmaker advocates stimulating domestic rare earth elements industry, calls for stockpiling minerals deemed critical petroleumnews.com A bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., in March has moved the rare earth conversation from focus groups to Capitol Hill. Coffman has introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would require government agencies – including the departments of State, Defense, Commerce and Interior – to support the re-establishment of rare earth element mining, refining, alloying and manufacturing operations in the United States. H.R. 4866, the “Rare Earths Supply-Chain Technology and Resources Transformation Act of 2010” or the Restart Act – also calls for a national stockpile of “critical” REEs. China is not only the sole source of nearly all of the REEs mined in the world, it also controls the refining and alloy processing of these strategic metals.