Germanium
A semiconductor metal recovered from zinc and coal ash, essential for fiber-optic cores, infrared optics and high-speed SiGe chips.
Germanium-doped glass carries light through the fiber that interconnects AI clusters; SiGe transistors appear in high-speed networking chips.
China held ~69% of supply in 2025; Western warehouse prices topped $6,000/kg vs ~$3,100/kg inside China. USGS withholds world production data.
Who calls it critical
Membership on each government list. “Strategic” marks a higher tier where the list has one; “group” means included as part of a group such as rare earths or PGMs.
Germanium: key questions
- Where is germanium mined or produced?
- Country-level production data for Germanium is limited or withheld in USGS statistics.
- Is germanium a critical mineral?
- Germanium appears on 7 of the 10 official lists we track (United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Japan, India, Australia, Canada).
- Is germanium in short supply?
- Our supply status: Tight / restricted. China held ~69% of supply in 2025; Western warehouse prices topped $6,000/kg vs ~$3,100/kg inside China. USGS withholds world production data.
- Why does germanium matter for AI infrastructure?
- Germanium-doped glass carries light through the fiber that interconnects AI clusters; SiGe transistors appear in high-speed networking chips.
Related minerals
ExplorerGallium
TightA by-product of aluminum refining that becomes gallium nitride (GaN) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) — the materials of power electronics, RF chips and lasers.
Indium
TightA soft by-product metal used in touchscreens (ITO) and in indium phosphide — the compound semiconductor behind many high-speed optical lasers.
Tellurium
WatchA rare by-product of copper refining used in cadmium-telluride solar panels, thermoelectric coolers and phase-change memory.