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Tellurium element Critical Material

Tellurium (Te), chemical element with atomic number 52. The experimental substrate here is soluble potassium tellurite, not a tellurium mineral, commodity feed, or secondary resource.

Identifiers & Classification

System Identifier Label
CHEBI CHEBI:30452 tellurium atom

Criticality Designations

Jurisdiction List Name Edition / Document Classification Source
United States of America U.S. Department of the Interior Final List of Critical Minerals 2025 (published November 7, 2025; 90 FR 50494-50497) critical usgs_2025

Microbial & Biochemical Mechanisms (1)

Resting-cell tellurite transformation to intracellular tellurium nanorods

redox transformation Microbial

Associated Organisms: Rhodococcus aetherivorans (NCBITaxon:191292)

Rhodococcus aetherivorans BCP1 (DSM 44980) resting cells produced intracellular tellurium nanostructures. Electron diffraction supported trigonal elemental tellurium in analyzed nanorods. The proposed surfactant-assisted assembly pathway remains an interpretation.

Experimental Context & Analytical Limits:
Laboratory aerobic exposure of LB-grown, twice PBS-washed cells in 50 mL PBS, pH 7.4, at 30 degrees C and 150 rpm for 0.5-16 h. The supplement specifies initial K2TeO3 loadings of 100, 500 or 1000 micrograms/mL; main-text labels instead call these tellurite concentrations. Preserve that mass-basis ambiguity without conversion to elemental Te. Biomass loading is not quantified in the exposure protocol. Solution depletion is not an isolated-product yield; industrial operation was not demonstrated.
Curated Evidence Points:
Figures 1-3 and 5 support solution depletion, intracellular nanostructures, and trigonal-Te diffraction. Figure 1 uses three biological replicates. At 16 h the higher nominal doses showed partial removal: 42 +/- 3% (500) and 28 +/- 4% (1000), not complete conversion. These are reported removal percentages, not recovery yields.
Supplementary methods and Figure S1 caption specify PBS-only and autoclaved-biomass controls at the highest loading; the main text reports no abiotic removal. The assay measures supernatant tellurite by diethyldithiocarbamate absorbance at 340 nm, calibrated with K2TeO3 in PBS. No analytical detection limit is given; apparent complete depletion at the lowest dose cannot establish literal zero.
Figure 7 proposes nanorod assembly assisted by amphiphilic biomolecules. The paper does not identify a necessary tellurite reductase or measure an isolated elemental-tellurium mass yield.

Sources & References

  1. chebi_tellurium: ChEBI:30452 - tellurium atom
    https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi/CHEBI:30452 (accessed 2026-10-11)
  2. usgs_2025: U.S. Geological Survey (2025). Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals. Federal Register 90 FR 50494-50497, November 7, 2025; tellurium entry on page 50497. The final list retains tellurium despite proposed removal in the draft.
    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-11-07/html/2025-19813.htm (accessed 2026-10-11)
  3. presentato_2018: Presentato et al. (2018). Assembly, growth and conductive properties of tellurium nanorods produced by Rhodococcus aetherivorans BCP1. Scientific Reports 8, 3923. DOI 10.1038/s41598-018-22320-x.
    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41598-018-22320-x (accessed 2026-10-11)
  4. presentato_2018_supplement: Presentato et al. (2018), supplementary information: growth/exposure and bioconversion methods; Supplementary Figure 1, abiotic controls. 41598_2018_22320_MOESM1_ESM.doc.
    https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-018-22320-x/MediaObjects/41598_2018_22320_MOESM1_ESM.doc (accessed 2026-10-11)
  5. ncbi_aetherivorans: NCBI Taxonomy: Rhodococcus aetherivorans (Taxonomy ID 191292; species)
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?id=191292&mode=Info (accessed 2026-10-11)

Curation History

Timestamp Curator Action Summary
2026-10-11T04:01:00Z Codex (GPT-6; Codex) create Created the tellurium identity, dated US criticality, and scoped BCP1 transformation record from verified authority pages and primary full text/supplement. Retained mass-basis ambiguity, partial outcomes, analytical limits, and distinction from isolated yield or deployment.

Record source: data/records/tellurium.yaml