What is coltan and what does it have to do with my cell phone?

UPDATE (11 Feb 2014): This article has been substantially revised since initial posting.


"Coltan" is short for columbite-tantalite, a mineral from which niobium (AKA columbium) and tantalum are extracted.  It's a mineral found mainly in Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi, and Congo-Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo). "Tantalite" is the usual internationally-used name for this mineral, which--depending on the grade--carries different concentrations of either tantalum or niobium.

About Tantalum

Niobium is usually used in the production of high-strength steel alloys, not semiconductors; tantalum is used in the production of cell phones because, as a superconductor, it sharply reduces the amount electricity required.¹ Superalloys account for about a fifth of consumption. Tantalum has an extremely high melting point, 3017° C, and is an excellent conductor.²  It can be made extremely strong for cutting tools, resists corrosion, and can be used to make surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters used in cell phones, etc.  In cell phones it is also used in capacitors and the lenses of cameras.

The Supply

Not all, or even an especially large proportion, of tantalum/niobium comes from Africa; most comes from Australia or South America, and much comes from minerals other than tantalite; however, tantalite is one of the more important ones, commercially (often any commercially significant tantalum-bearing mineral is called "tantalite.")³

Cell Phone Recycling Guide: The legacy of "blood diamonds" is well known, however the fact that a similar arrangement exists to mine coltan (Columbium Tantalum) is lesser known. Tantalum is a superconductor, one of the best on Earth. It is used to coat capacitors to help them create more power from less energy so that your cell phone no longer needs a battery larger than the phone itself. In war torn central Africa, people are forced into modern day slavery to mine this rare element, which is then sold to fund the wars in this region. Recently the majority of Tantalum production has shifted to Australia, however it is a rare element, so decreasing demand helps decrease the likelihood that manufacturers will turn to African supplies.

A lot of the moral headaches associated with African tantalite arise from "artisanal mining" (artisanal & small scale mining, or ASM) only a part of which comes from areas controlled by warring militia from Congo-Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo).  One of the features of the Dodd-Frank Act was a provision requiring companies reporting to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to say whether or not the tantalum they bought came from the conflict region.⁴

Tantalum Market Overview: A major problem with the whole issue of conflict tantalum is the ability to track tantalum back through several stages to its original source. A key element of this is the concept of “bag and tag”, which essentially means identifying tantalum ore at the source of production and providing the means to track it down the chain.

The industry itself has introduced several schemes to address this. One is the Conflict-Free Smelter (CFS) Program, which was developed by the electronics industry to eradicate unethical sources of raw materials from the supply chain. Driven by the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), the CFS Program is being adopted by the automotive, aerospace and other metal-consuming industries and a growing number of tantalum smelters are now certified as conflict-free.

Since originally posting this essay, the locus of concern about "conflict exotics" (i.e, artisanal mining of exotic metals and strategic materials in warzones, usually under duress) has shifted from the DRC to the Central African Republic (CAR).

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Notes

1. "Niobium: Market Outlook"; "Tantalum: Market Outlook," Roskill (accessed 11 Feb 2014)


2. "Tantalum Market Overview," Minor Metals Trade Association (accessed 11 Feb 2014).  The MMTA report mentions:

   For most of the 2000s it was often reported that the majority of the world’s tantalum resources were located in Central Africa and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in particular. Towards the end of the decade, however, the Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center, the industry’s principal forum, estimated that some 40% of the most likely global resource base is in Brazil and elsewhere in South America, followed by Australia, with 21%. Central Africa was estimated to account for less than 10%.

   Is this true, or was "artisanally mined" tantalum accounted for as contribution from Brazil?


3. Tantalum - Raw Materials and Processing," from website for Tantalum-Niobium International Study (TIS) Center (Lasne, Belgium--accessed 11 Feb 2014). A major development since originally posting this article was the collapse of demand/prices and some national suppliers in 2009-2012.  


4. See Ken Matthysen & Iain Clarkson, "Gold and diamonds in the Central African Republic: the country’s mining sector, and related social, economic and environmental issues" , ActionAid Nederland and Cordaid (Feb 2013), p.11, for the Dodd-Frank Act disclosure requirements re: tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold.

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Sources & Additional Reading

"Cell Phone Recycling Guide," Phone Scoop blog (via Textually blog, 19 Jan 2005)



John F. Papp, "Mineral resource of the month: Niobium (Columbium)" (December 2007 accessed 11 Feb 2014); and Larry D. Cunningham, "Mineral Resource of the Month: Tantalum" (August 2004), both from GeoTimes blog. Both discuss the applications for the materials (including substitutes).


"Columbium (Niobium) and Tantalum" , Larry D. Cunningham, USGS (1999)


ADDED 13 Nov: "Mobile phones link to bloody Congo conflict" (Independent.ie, 9 Nov 2008)

ICHIM (Part 2)

Another item at ICHIM I thought was especially interesting was Me-Ror v.2 (Vadim Bernard). Here, the user sits in a booth and evidently moves a hand about: This installation gives an account of a research on a prospective setting for the video image. By combining an infra-red camera and an infra-red source placed in the same axis, it is possible, by filtering the visible light, to obtain an image in levels of gray where the light intensity of the image is a function of the depth of the scene. The closer the filmed object is, the more it is lighted up. In addition one films the same scene, but this time in color. By combining the two images captured in a single flowing video, one obtains a new format of video to four layers : three layers for color (RVB) and a layer for the depth (3D). This technology was, IIRC, used by the USAF back in the early 1980's to analyze stationary images for depth.

This was an idea I had had long ago, of future interfaces in which a user moves a hand through a hologram, such as a Munsell Color Space, and the computer reads the motion of hand and eye. There are many implications of this sort of interface, one of which is the inversion of space; instead of the future PDA user being spacially confined to the tiny device she is using, the device uses (say, holographic technology to) project object and response-observation into whatever space the user needs.

About the iPod

By now, I presume nearly all readers have heard of the iPod. Here's a page at Apple illustrating the device.

This is essentially an MP3 storage device that stores up to 10,000 songs (assuming a Pop music format; I suppose for classical fans like me, that doesn't translate to 10,000 symphonies). The iPod was released in 2001 and made an impact partly through its immense popularity as a musical playback medium, partly through its popularization of MP3's as a medium for propagating music (in essence, allowing hobbyist-bands to enter the market with free samples of their songs; also, a revival of the political ballad, recorded to influence opinions rather than make money for the artist), and partly through its groundbreaking commercials.

However, the iPod was also more expensive than existing alternatives; while it also allowed one to carry one's entire music collection everywhere, it also required one to digitize that collection from an existing collection. Since then, the iPod's price has declined, and Apple has introduced a mini-iPod, the iPod Nano (Daniel's News Space).


Unlike the iPod and the iPod mini it replaces, the iPod Nano employs flash memory rather than the tiny hard disk drives developed as PC cards for laptops. The Nano will store only 1,000 songs, reflecting the discovery from practice that a thousand is the mode for users. I've been a little startled at the strong emphasis on reduced size; it seems to me that there will perhaps be joint efforts between Apple and digital camera producers to incorporate the iPod into cameras, or perhaps other PDA devices. At this point, I'd think it's handier to have a single device that does many things, than to have half a dozen gizmos, all quite small, with different features.

Besides, cross-marketing could get a lot of marginal users to become accustomed to using "the other half," i.e., if you get an iPod-Olympus digital camera, and you normally don't listen to music so much, having the iPod there all the time might get you habituated to using it.

Technology and Bureaucracy (Part 3)

(Part 1)

In his excellent book, The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder remarks that the computer is a "status quo" technology because it facillitates the running of bureaucracies; additional uses, such as matching the power of bureaucracies to do mass mailings or archive research data, are relatively unthreatening to the bureaucracy they are used against. Kidder, unfortunately, doesn't dwell on this point; the review I linked to, while generally favorable, correctly objects that it is by and large a heroic portrait of the people who introduce new technology products. The point, though, about technologies helping either bureaucracies or their opponents, has been a fascinating one to me for decades.

While the stand-alone minicomputer that Kidder wrote about was obviously suited mainly to making bureaucracy more efficient, it's a little harder to see how the internet, let alone, 3G and PDAs, would do so. For the last three years I've tended to harbor a furtive hope that blogs would strike a mighty blow against bureaucracy's steady encroachment on all forms of reality. At night, as I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, I wondered what utter defeat would look like: a cyberspace in which useful websites used technology that required costly developement tools to implement, shutting out people who did not make money from their sites; or else, internet service that furnished users with "smartbrowsers," browsers with search-engines that confined the user/subscriber to selected sites.

I have to say that I think the PDA, so far, looks like it is turning into this. The cost of implementing new 3G technology has been so great, and PCS providers have sunk so much into market entry, that suspect those providers are the devils in a faustian bargain with governments that sold them wireless channels. They're going to recoup that money through commericals, not user subscriptions. That, and consumerist quietism, are strangling us.

Technology and Bureaucracy (Part 2)

(Part 1)

Blogs, independent news gathering, and the connected PDA are all challenges to bureaucratic power. Bureaucracies, whether belonging to firms, NGOs, or governments, are essential tools for the services those organizations render, but they have to be accountable. If not, they become a complete menace to human freedom and safety.

This is so obvious I feel embarrassed having to say it. Put abstractly, it is non-threatening enough, even vapid. Applied to specific situations, like the military conduct at Guantanamo Bay, one is likely to be called a traitor by high ranking government officials. Likewise, libertarians don't win my respect when they essentially reason that firms that ruthlessly suppress independent information about themselves, are somehow entitled to because "they're private." In other words, libertarians seem anxious to establish that, in the power struggle between the corporation, state, and individual, if the corporation wins absolute control, then it's absolutely OK. No matter how the corporation uses that power. Such prima facie defenses, in my opinion, prove immutably that the people who propound them are fanatics, as dangerous to freedom as fascists are.

And the fact is that this is one of the reasons why "intimate computing" has failed to pose a significant challenge to bureaucracy. Bureaucracies seem to have recruited robotic defenders, not merely of them, which should be understandable, but of their worst excesses. The tiny minority of blogs or independent media sources that actually do show genuine signs of intellectual curiosity, are bogged down by human "bots" that rabidly attack them and slime them. The affair of "Rathergate" is quite illustrative; while companies like Clearchannel can set up AM radio stations to broadcast the "movement conservative" message everywhere in the country, they require a steady stream of petty scandals to demonize their enemies. I occasionally monitor AM radio stations, and I've noticed that they don't actually promote a positivist or normative message at all—not anymore. Nowadays, it's all hate all the time—hatred not merely of "leftists," "feminazis," "the homosexual agenda," or the "liberal elites," but also of conservatives who depart, however briefly, from the "movement." In order to personally slime even the most impeccably credentialed conservatives, "movement conservatives" require a machine that digs up dirt or circulates slander that isn't even true. In this respect, the power of the internet to hunt down minions and duplicate talking points, seems an insuperable weapon of bureaucrats to protect themselves.

(Part 3)

GPS in PDAs

This is not at all surprising: a PDA incorporating GPS. For a couple of years at least, GPS was available as a "card" (i.e., as a device that plugged into the PDA using the PC Card/PCMCIA slot). Now more OEMs are incorporating the GPS into the device itself, along with GPS applications (e.g., navigation systems).

The hv6500 Mobile Messenger will be available with Vodafone SIMs shortly, and can be ordered from online retailers in two versions, the hv6510 without a camera, at £366, and the hv6515 with a camera at £389. Despite being a newcomer to telecoms handsets, and some teething trouble with the 6315 model, HP is adapting well to the demands of operators, said Regine Hohnsbein, HP's European director of handhelds and mobility. "We already have 15 operator contracts in Europe for converged devices," he said.

The camera-free version has been made at the request of corporations, but their stance that cameras are frippery has softened, said Smith. "Some corporates don't want cameras, but we've been asked for some applications that use cameras," he said, listing insurance assessors and car -ire companies. "It's not just consumers that want cameras."

Of course, my next prediction is neural microprocessors that allow PDA users to literally download additional capacities for their devices. If your PDA doesn't come with GPS, it can become GPS -capable by reconfiguring its microprocessor instruction set.

I've invented something and it's an odd fit. What do I do now?

A friend of mine developed a design to improve user interface with PDAs. It's a pretty cool concept, but it's a very peculiar fit. For an OEM to adopt a new user interface—that's a very important new step. For over a decade now, the manufacturers of PDAs have spent literally billions on trying to make text entry work. The cell phone is gradually merging with the PDA and evolving along the same lines; yet the interface used on cell phones for SMS is not very well suited for it. At the same time, the QWERTY keypad used on larger PDAs like the RIM Blackberry are not very well suited to SMS.* People put up with them, but it's the demand for SMS (and MMS) is driving the growth both in PDAs and in 3G cell phones—not their disappointing user interface.

So you'd think a new user interface would receive an enthusiastic hearing.

Well, when my friend described his idea to me, I was quite skeptical. I strongly suspect that there exists a mathematically ideal arrangement of keys—both the number of keys, and the arrangement of those keys. I think a reasonably efficient team of mathematicians and programmers could find that arrangement in about a week, and I think that arrangement is on file somewhere at Samsung, LG, Ericsson, and Nokia. I also believe that slightly less reliable information is on file with these firms on the cost of these phones, and less reliable information still on the benefits.

What that means is that our typical large 3G/PDA OEM** knows with 100% certainty what the best design is; knows with 75% certainty what the costs of implementation will be; and knows with 25% certainty what the commercial benefits of implementation will be. Each firm has a patent on its version, or can get a patent whenever it needs to, because each firm used slightly different constraints in finding its optimal design. The managers of the firms understand that their estimates are flawed; they know that they err (a lot) on the side of conservativism when estimating the benefits, and on the side of excess when estimating the costs. But statistically, those "errors" are the way to bet, and so they do.

(To be continued)

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* SMS: short message service; MMS: multimedia messaging service
** OEM: original equipment manufacturer; VAR: value-added resaler