Indium is our second in the extrusion series for these presentation domes. Too soft to form structurally sound crystals, this metal (along with its periodic cousins lead and thallium) are instead turned into this type of wiry format which we feel to be the most attractive alternative.

A commercially valuable resource, indium is recovered as a trace byproduct of zinc and copper mining. While the mining of these two metals is intense the yield in indium is rather paltry. Industry studies note with alarm these mines will be tapped out within a couple of decades unless new mines come online. Meanwhile, China has locked up nearly two thirds of the annual supply and nearly all of that is earmarked to its own electronics factories pumping out the motherboards and screens which require this metal to function. Rare already, the beefy spaghetti strand in this dome might well have a solid reason to be displayed in a museum gallery dedicated to once-common materials of the iPhone age.