Rare earth elements power the motors in electric vehicles, the magnets in wind turbines, and the displays in consumer electronics. Yet separating them from one another has long relied on toxic solvents, strong acids, and dozens of repetitive chemical steps. A new approach from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering changes that equation. It uses the precise gaps in a common mineral to sort ions electrochemically. And it does so in water.
Assoc. Prof. Chong Liu led the project. Her team, working with colleagues at Northwestern University and Argonne National Lab, showed that layered manganese oxide can exploit tiny differences in how rare earth ions carry water molecules around them. The result? A process that avoids organic solvents entirely. Published July 21, 2026, in Nature Chemical Engineering, the work arrives at a moment when governments and companies scramble for alternatives to China’s near-total control of rare earth processing.
Traditional separation methods mix ores or recycled material with custom chelators, then wash them repeatedly with kerosene-like solvents and acids. Each cycle yields only a few percent enrichment. The waste is hazardous. The energy cost is high. Liu’s method sidesteps much of that. “This is the first time that people have used electrochemical intercalation and harnessed the structural characteristics to separate similar lanthanides, which are intrinsically very hard to separate,” Liu told the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.
The material itself is straightforward. Manganese oxide forms stacked layers. The researchers tuned the gaps between those layers to just a few water molecules wide. When a mixed solution of rare earth ions flows through, ions with smaller hydration shells slip in more snugly. Heavier lanthanides such as dysprosium bind tighter. Lighter ones such as lanthanum push the layers apart slightly and bind more loosely. An applied electric current drives the ions in and out. Simple in concept. Powerful in effect.
But similarity among neighboring elements still posed problems. Neodymium and lanthanum, for instance, behaved too alike. The team added magnesium ions to act as pins. These held the channel width fixed. Small differences in ion size suddenly produced large differences in binding strength. Enrichment of neodymium over lanthanum jumped from 1.6-fold to 5.4-fold. After two cycles the sample reached 92 percent purity. Short steps. Big gains.
George Schatz, professor of chemistry at Northwestern and co-author, underscored the practical edge. “This kind of separation is competitive with other rare earth separation methods, but it’s done in water, without organic solvents,” he said. “That’s a difference that could actually matter at manufacturing scale.” The quote appears in the same Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering article.
Simulations and measurements backed every claim. Schatz’s group ran density functional theory calculations. Argonne scientists supplied synchrotron X-ray data. The models matched experiment atom by atom, revealing exactly how each ion arranges its water shell inside the confined space. Siqi Zou, then a UChicago PME graduate student and co-first author, explained the pinning mechanism. “Even elements that behave almost identically will still try to expand the material to make room for their water molecules. By pinning the channel so it can’t expand at all, we forced that small difference in behavior to become a much bigger difference in how strongly each element binds.”
The timing feels strategic. China processes roughly 90 percent of the world’s rare earths. Western nations have poured money into mining and magnet production, yet separation and refining remain bottlenecks. Recent federal funding reflects the urgency. In June 2026 the U.S. Department of Energy awarded $134 million for two projects that recover and refine rare earths from waste streams, including red mud and mine tailings. One effort, led by the Colorado School of Mines and partners, aims to build a demonstration facility in Louisiana. Details are outlined in an Innovation News Network report.
Other groups pursue parallel paths. At UC Santa Barbara, chemistry professor Justin Wilson and postdoctoral researcher Yangyang Gao created a room-temperature process using the chelator G-macropa. It binds larger neodymium ions, allowing smaller dysprosium to precipitate with baking soda. One cycle concentrates dysprosium more than 800-fold. Traditional liquid-liquid extraction manages less than 10-fold. Wilson called the results surprising at first. “A cleaner and more efficient separation of these elements could potentially open up domestic supplies of the rare earth elements,” he said in the UC Santa Barbara news release. The method targets e-waste magnets and avoids organic solvents.
Sandia National Laboratories has spent years developing metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, as selective sponges. These tinker-toy structures can be tuned with surface chemical groups to prefer one rare earth over others or even over common metals like iron. Geochemist Anastasia Ilgen led the effort. “We synthesized MOFs with variable surface chemistry and were able to show through adsorption experiments that these MOFs can pick out rare-earth elements from a mixture of other metals,” she explained in a Sandia Lab News article. Materials chemist Dorina Sava Gallis added that the team is now combining insights from different MOF systems to tailor selectivity further.
Commercial recyclers are moving too. ReElement Technologies, a unit of American Resources Corp., launched urban mining services for rare earth magnets in 2025 and expanded into tungsten purification by mid-2026. The company claims 99.9 percent purity on tungsten concentrate, a defense-critical metal long tied to foreign supply chains. Its July 2026 updates appear on the ReElement newsroom page.
Meanwhile, USA Rare Earth took a 13.6 percent stake in France’s Carester in July 2026. The deal gives access to heavy rare earth separation capacity coming online later this year and to feedstock from Brazil’s Serra Verde mine. Posts on X from analysts and industry accounts describe the investment as filling a key gap in Western magnet supply chains. One recent analysis noted that high-grade magnet swarf and end-of-life motors offer far better economics than shredded consumer e-waste, where rare earth content can be as low as 0.03 percent by mass.
Liu’s group sees its manganese oxide approach as more than a laboratory curiosity. It points to a design principle: tune channel width at the angstrom scale and ions that differ by fractions of that distance sort themselves. The method still needs scale-up testing. Yet its reliance on electricity, water, and an abundant mineral suggests lower capital costs and easier permitting than solvent-heavy plants. Future work will probe the remaining lanthanides and sharpen the pinning effect through refined models.
Policy makers have taken notice. The Trump administration signaled in 2025 it would expand price supports for domestic rare earth projects, including recycling and magnet production. Reuters sources described the push as evoking the speed of Operation Warp Speed. A Reuters story from July 2025 captured industry voices calling for faster permitting and partnerships across the supply chain.
The broader picture is one of convergence. Academic breakthroughs in selective channels and protein-based binders meet rising commercial interest in urban mining and government capital for demonstration plants. No single technology will displace China’s dominance overnight. But each advance chips away at the chemical complexity and environmental burden that have kept rare earth refining so concentrated.
Companies that master cleaner separation will gain leverage in electric vehicles, defense systems, and renewable energy. Investors already reward those who secure feedstock, separation capacity, and magnet production under one roof. For the materials scientists, the reward is simpler. After decades of incremental gains on a stubborn problem, they have shown that sometimes the solution sits in the space between atomic layers.
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication