Gallium
History
In 1875, Carl Hagenbeck held his first animal show in Hamburg. However, far more interesting events were taking place in France the same year. In the town of Cognac, 120 km north of Bordeaux, the chemist Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran made a groundbreaking discovery after much effort: Gallium. A pale blue shimmering metal with strangely contradictory properties, which, over 100 years later, would become indispensable for many technical innovations.
Properties
The very soft Gallium causes astonishment: it melts at just above room temperature (29.8°C) and contracts in the process. At its boiling point, it goes to the opposite extreme: when Gallium begins to boil, the thermometer reads an astonishing 2403°C.
Applications
Gallium has many exciting applications: for example, in semiconductor, solar, electronics, and LED technology. The worldwide increase in LED use, such as in the automotive sector, and the rapidly growing sales of solar panels, along with mobile high-tech devices like notebooks, cell phones, and gaming consoles, have resulted in a genuine gallium boom. Additionally, gallium is used as an alloy component for mercury replacement materials.
Perspectives
Because gallium is so rare and highly sought after by the high-tech industry, it is one of the metals for which the EU Commission predicted supply shortages in a 2010 report. Experts expect that gallium consumption in LED usage alone will rise to well over 100 tons per year by 2025. This is likely to significantly worsen the supply situation. Overall, a demand increase of about 25% per year is anticipated.
Tech Metals Tuesday
In our Tech Metals Tuesday series, we present various metals in video format.
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