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Rare-earth-element commodities, Australian list scope commodity Critical Material

This collective commodity family follows Australia's 20 February 2024 rare-earth-elements entry: yttrium and all fifteen lanthanides, including promethium. Scandium has a separate entry in that list. This sixteen-member economic grouping differs from the broader seventeen-element chemical definition, which also includes scandium, and from the EU 2020 assessment's fifteen-member light/heavy split, which excludes both scandium and promethium. Inclusion of promethium preserves the Australian source's stated membership and does not assert an ordinary mined promethium supply. This family overlaps individual element records and narrower rare-earth commodity groups; it is not one mineral, alloy or fixed mixture. The mechanism below concerns only a synthetic neodymium/dysprosium solution and does not establish recovery of every family member or treatment of ore, magnets or industrial waste.

Criticality Designations

Jurisdiction List Name Edition / Document Classification Source
Australia Australia's Critical Minerals List; rare-earth-elements group, footnote 17 20 February 2024 update, following the 16 February 2024 ministerial decision critical australia_2024

Microbial & Biochemical Mechanisms (1)

Synthetic neodymium/dysprosium separation using immobilized Hans-LanM R100K

separation Microbial

Associated Organisms: Hansschlegelia quercus (NCBITaxon:2528245)

Purified R100K lanmodulin derived from H. quercus and immobilized through a terminal cysteine on maleimide-functionalized agarose retained Nd(III) more strongly than Dy(III) during malonate elution. Subsequent acid elution released Nd(III). Microbial involvement denotes the bacterial protein's origin and recombinant production in Escherichia coli; the separation itself was cell-free. This is an engineered protein separation, not metabolism or an assay of living H. quercus.

Experimental Context & Analytical Limits:
Figure 4d uses a 0.7 mL bed and a synthetic 95:5 Nd/Dy mixture made from rare-earth chloride salts. The supplementary protocol conditions the column with 10 mM homopiperazine-1,4-bis(2-ethanesulfonic acid) at pH 5, specifies 0.5 mL/min unless otherwise stated, and a five-bed-volume water wash before desorption. The elution steps use 30, 50 and 90 mM malonate followed by pH 1.5 HCl. Table S16 reports mean feed concentrations of 344.2 micromolar Nd and 18.5 micromolar Dy; mixed-ion fractions were measured by ICP-MS. Wild-type immobilized Hans-LanM in Extended Data Figure 6 is a protein comparator, not a protein-necessity control. Column-run replication and operating temperature are not explicitly established for Figure 4d; no matched bare-agarose separation control was located in the inspected paper and supplement. No complex feed contaminants, isolated metal product or industrial deployment were tested in this binary experiment.
Curated Evidence Points:
Figure 4d (printed page 91) reports Dy purity 98.1% and yield 99.3%, and Nd purity 99.9% and yield 99.8% in the selected aqueous fractions. Extended Data Figure 6 reports wild-type values of 83.6% purity and 98.1% yield for Dy, and 99.8% purity and 98.5% yield for Nd. These are conditional binary-separation results. Purity is the molar share of Nd or Dy within the measured Nd-plus-Dy pair, not total chemical purity. The comparison supports better Dy enrichment by this R100K preparation under the tested protocol, without proving a cellular mechanism or applicability to all rare earths.
Page 92 and Extended Data Figure 6 explicitly distinguish solution dimerization from column behavior: functional dimers may occur in only a minority of immobilized protein units. Thus the column's improved separation is not direct proof that dimerization caused the improvement. The paper's synthetic model mixture is not an experimentally processed electronic-waste feed.
Supplementary printed page 3 specifies synthetic chloride stock preparation, buffer, default flow and washing; page 4 identifies ICP-MS for mixed-ion fractions. Table S16 on printed page 53 gives the binary feed concentrations. These methods constrain the claim to aqueous synthetic-ion chromatography.
Fig4d cells L33 and K45 calculate molar purity from the selected fractions. Dy yield O33 divides SUM(H32:H43) by SUM(H32:H51), and Nd yield N45 divides SUM(G44:G51) by SUM(G32:G51): the denominators are summed tabulated eluate, not an independently measured input mass balance. O33 is 99.3964%, whereas the figure prints 99.3%; the figure values are retained as reported. Source data also map not-detected cells to zero and include negative analytical values. Table S16's Nd standard deviation of 4.4 differs from the workbook's approximately 15.1942. These ambiguities are retained in the research dossier; no concentration observations or corrected yield values are imported.

Sources & References

  1. australia_2024: Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources. Australia's Critical Minerals List and Strategic Materials List, updated 20 February 2024; Table 1 rare-earth-elements and separate scandium rows; footnote 17 explicitly names yttrium and fifteen lanthanides, including promethium.
    https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/australias-critical-minerals-list-and-strategic-materials-list (accessed 2026-10-11)
  2. eu_factsheets_2020: European Commission (2020). Study on the EU's list of Critical Raw Materials, Factsheets on Critical Raw Materials; DOI 10.2873/92480, Section 21.1, printed/PDF page 547: chemical definition and explicitly narrower economic assessment scope.
    https://rmis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/uploads/CRM_2020_Factsheets_critical_Final.pdf (accessed 2026-10-11)
  3. mattocks_2023: Mattocks et al. (2023). Enhanced rare-earth separation with a metal-sensitive lanmodulin dimer. Nature 618:87-93; DOI 10.1038/s41586-023-05945-5. Figure 4d, page 92, Extended Data Figure 6 and expression/immobilization Methods.
    https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05945-5 (accessed 2026-10-11)
  4. mattocks_2023_si: Mattocks et al. (2023), Supplementary Information: printed page 3 breakthrough-column protocol; printed page 53 Table S16 synthetic Nd/Dy feed concentrations. Same experiment as the main paper.
    https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-023-05945-5/MediaObjects/41586_2023_5945_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (accessed 2026-10-11)
  5. mattocks_2023_fig4_data: Mattocks et al. (2023), Source Data Figure 4 workbook, Fig4d worksheet: synthetic binary separation, fraction purity and yield formulas.
    https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-023-05945-5/MediaObjects/41586_2023_5945_MOESM12_ESM.xlsx (accessed 2026-10-11)
  6. ncbi_hansschlegelia_quercus: NCBI Taxonomy 2528245, Hansschlegelia quercus; species identity of the lanmodulin source organism
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?id=2528245 (accessed 2026-10-11)

Curation History

Timestamp Curator Action Summary
2026-10-11T08:37:57Z Codex (GPT-6; Codex) CREATE Created the rare-earth-element-commodities commodity record with explicit official group scope and dated criticality. Official source scopes and evidence limits were retained; independent scientific review is recorded separately.

Record source: data/records/rare-earth-element-commodities.yaml