We can thank the extraordinarily high demands necessary in the making of electronic semiconductors for the high purity that is commonly available for germanium. This glassy element shares many properties with better-known silicon which explains the similar applications in its primary use. But one does not reach for the more expensive option without good reason. It turns out that its properties are just unique enough, and desirable, that the list of uses for this element keeps getting longer.

Zinc, among the bottom of the pile in terms of valuable ores, is where germanium is recovered from as a trace byproduct. Kilo for kilo it is well over a hundred times more expensive. If the price differential continues to increase it may well be that the tables eventually turn leaving zinc as the “byproduct”!