Your future smartphone may be made out from deep-sea rocks, according to scientists who say that an untapped source of rare earth elements widely used in cell phones may lie under the sea.
German scientists have developed a new method to efficiently extract rare earth metals such as Yttrium, Praseodymium and Dysprosium from deep-sea rocks. As millions of smartphones and other electronic gadgets are being developed every year using rare earth metals, supplies of these high-tech materials may become scarce, Discovery News reported.
A new study by German geochemists has now found that an untapped source of rare earth elements may lie under the sea. The potential deep-sea sources of rare earth elements are nodules of iron and manganese that are abundant on the ocean floor.