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Materials Abundance, Price, and Availability Data from the Years 1998 to 2015

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Abstract

Materials researchers are paying ever more attention to sustainability, criticality, availability, and other industrial ecology metrics and concepts as they develop new materials. Previous reports for these metrics have typically been either for a few specific compositions or for a single year. In this work, we present a new curated dataset which reports the global elemental production on a per country basis from the years 1998 to 2015 alongside elemental prices over this same time period. The data are taken from United States Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook entries. In addition to the raw data, analysis of the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index has been carried out and is reported alongside market share of each element for each year in the range provided. Lastly, we present a few possible scenarios for data utility such as exploring trends over the time period, correlating volatility with availability, or examining abrupt changes in the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and how these may or may not relate to geopolitical events such as wars in mineral producing countries.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through CAREER Award DMR 1651668 as well as Award CMMI 1562226. T.D.S conceived the study and helped collect data; B.T. collected data; S.K.K. helped process the data. All authors assisted in preparing the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA

    Brennan Theler, Steven K. Kauwe & Taylor D. Sparks

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  1. Brennan Theler
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  2. Steven K. Kauwe
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  3. Taylor D. Sparks
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Correspondence to Taylor D. Sparks.

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Theler, B., Kauwe, S.K. & Sparks, T.D. Materials Abundance, Price, and Availability Data from the Years 1998 to 2015. Integr Mater Manuf Innov 9, 144–150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40192-020-00173-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40192-020-00173-5

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