Some of the elements we’ve looked at so far, like germanium, were very
popular a few years back but aren’t really used any more. Other elements
like indium only recently came into the spotlight.
SOME ELEMENTS ARE SO POPULAR, IT’S BECOMING A PROBLEM.
Long ago, batteries were made using nickel. Because of this, the price of
nickel skyrocketed, forcing us to come up with the lithium battery as a
cheaper replacement. Indium, used in LCD displays, is also getting more
expensive by the year. Scarce elements like indium and elements that are
generally very hard to process or extract are called rare metals.
ALMOST ALL RARE METALS IN JAPAN ARE IMPORTE ...