Gallium

Overview

Gallium is a soft, silvery-white metal, similar to aluminum. It melts at about 29.8 °C but does not boil until 2,229 °C.¹ Its main value is in compound semiconductors. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) are used in integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices for defense, telecommunications and high-performance computing.²

Gallium is critical because supply is almost entirely in one country. China accounted for 99% of world primary production in 2025, and it has controlled gallium exports since August 2023.² Gallium is on the US critical minerals list, and the EU lists it as both a critical and a strategic raw material.³⁴

Where it comes from

Gallium is not mined for its own sake. It occurs in very small concentrations in the ores of other metals. Most primary gallium is a by-product of processing bauxite into alumina, and the rest comes from zinc-processing residues. Bauxite contains on average about 50 parts per million of gallium, and world bauxite resources are estimated to contain more than 1 million t of it.² World primary low-purity production was an estimated 900 t in 2025, up from 848 t in 2024. Outside China, only Japan and Russia still produced primary gallium. Kazakhstan stopped in 2013, Hungary in 2015 and Germany in 2016, and Ukraine most likely stopped in 2022.²

• China900 t · 99%
• Russia6 t · <1%
• Japan3 t · <1%

USGS reports gallium in kilograms; values here are converted to tonnes. World total shown is the sum of USGS country estimates; USGS rounds it to 900 t. The United States had no primary production. Source: Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Gallium

China also holds nearly all production capacity: an estimated 1,600 t a year out of about 1,700 t worldwide. Several projects outside China were announced in 2025, including in Australia, Canada, Greece, Kazakhstan and the Republic of Korea.²

Primary gallium is refined into high-purity metal for semiconductors. In the United States, one company in New York recovered and refined high-purity gallium from imported low-purity metal and new scrap. The country has had no primary gallium production since 1987.²

What it is used for

In the United States, integrated circuits accounted for 73% of gallium consumption and optoelectronic devices for 26%.²

{{chart:end-uses}}

GaAs wafers are used to make integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices such as laser diodes, LEDs, photodetectors and solar cells. GaN is used in integrated circuits and optoelectronics. Gallium-based circuits serve defense systems, high-performance computers and telecommunications equipment.² GaN is also used in blue and green LEDs, Blu-ray technology, mobile phones and pressure sensors. Gallium metal alloys readily with most metals and is used in low-melting alloys and high-temperature thermometers.¹

Grades and forms

Gallium moves through the supply chain in three steps: low-purity primary metal from alumina or zinc plants, high-purity refined metal, and compound semiconductors, mostly traded as wafers. US trade statistics track gallium metal and GaAs wafers separately.² China's 2023 export controls cover gallium metal and a range of compounds, including the nitride, oxide, phosphide, arsenide, selenide and antimonide.⁵

Trade and policy

The United States relies on imports for all of its gallium. In 2025 it imported an estimated 25,000 kg of gallium metal, more than double the 2024 figure, while GaAs wafer imports fell by 24%. In 2021–24, its imports of metal came mainly from Canada (28%), Japan (22%), China (18%) and Germany (16%).²

China's gallium export controls have developed as follows:

According to Chinese customs data reported by Metal Tech News, China's gallium exports to Japan fell to zero in the first months of 2026.¹⁰

In the United States, the Department of Energy announced funding in September 2025 for research into recovering gallium from alumina refining or zinc smelting. The aim is to restart domestic primary recovery for the first time in almost 40 years. In November 2025 the Department of War made a Defense Production Act Title III award for a demonstration plant in Louisiana that will recover gallium and scandium from industrial waste.²

In the EU, the Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks for strategic raw materials such as gallium: 10% of EU consumption from EU extraction, 40% from EU processing and 25% from recycling. No more than 65% of any strategic raw material should come from a single third country.¹¹

This section is factual background, not legal or trade-compliance advice.

Recycling and substitution

No gallium is recovered from old scrap such as end-of-life electronics. Large amounts of new scrap from making GaAs devices are reprocessed, and in the United States this is done at one facility in New York.²

Substitution is possible in some uses. Organic liquid crystals can replace LEDs in displays. Silicon competes with GaAs in solar cells and in some mobile-phone power amplifiers, and silicon-germanium is replacing GaAs in some heterojunction bipolar transistors. Indium phosphide can replace GaAs in some infrared laser diodes. In many defense applications, however, there are no effective substitutes for GaAs and GaN.²

Sources

1. Gallium: element information, properties and uses. Royal Society of Chemistry, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩ ↩²

2. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Gallium. U.S. Geological Survey, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

3. Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals. Federal Register, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

4. EU critical raw materials. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (RMIS), accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

5. Announcement on the Implementation of Export Control of Items Related to Gallium and Germanium. International Energy Agency, Policies Database, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Ministry of Commerce Notice 2024 No. 46: Notice Concerning Strengthening Controls on Exports of Relevant Dual-Use Items to the United States (translation). Center for Security and Emerging Technology, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

7. MOFCOM Announcement No. 72 of 2025 on adjusting the implementation of Announcement No. 46 of 2024. Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

8. China suspends ban on gallium, germanium, antimony exports to US. Mining Technology, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

9. MOFCOM Announcement No. 1 of 2026 on strengthening export controls on dual-use items to Japan. Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

10. China curbs tech metal exports to Japan. Metal Tech News, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

11. Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 (Critical Raw Materials Act). EUR-Lex, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩