Smartphones made out of deep-sea rocks now possible in new ore-leaching method

Rare earth metals or deep-sea rocks such as Yttrium, Praseodymium and Dysprosium may soon be used to manufacture the parts of your smartphone. Yep. In an exciting research done by Geochemistry researchers at Jacobs University in Germany, it has come to light that your smartphone's screen, speakers or internal circuits could very well be made out of these earth elements. With thousands of new smartphones and tablets popping out everywhere, the high-tech materials used to create these are depleting rapidly. The ocean floor is rich source for iron and manganese. Known as the "ferromanganese deposits", these are an abundantly available in the core of the Earth.

Using an efficient new way to extract these rare earth metals from ferromanganese nodules from the ocean floor, the researchers have advanced and refined the ore-leaching method and become successful in to extraction of up to 80% of four rare earth metals from some ferromanganese nodules.


Rare earth metals are a group of 17 naturally occurring elements on the periodic table with similar chemical properties. With the ever-increasing demand, these elements could find applications in future solar panels and wind turbines too. In a study published in the Applied Geochemistry journal, the researchers note that their pilot work consists of selective extraction of high-tech metals from marine ferromanganese nodules and crusts which showed that specific metal-binding organic ligands may have promising potential in future processing technologies of these oxide deposits.

It is great to see the advanced research being done to dig out high-tech materials for use in our future smartphones and tablets. What do you think about that? Share with us in comments below.

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