Opportunity timeline
In plain English
The Department of Energy wants to license a new technology from Los Alamos National Laboratory that uses an engineered protein to recover rare earth elements from liquid mixtures. This bio-inspired system gathers target metals into separable clusters, offering a cleaner and more flexible way to concentrate these critical materials. The technology is modular, allowing for adaptation to different rare earth elements and feedstocks, and avoids the need for harsh processing methods.
About this opportunity
Protein-Based Rare Earth Recovery via Condensation from scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory offers a cleaner, flexible way to capture and concentrate rare earth elements from complex liquid mixtures by using a bio-inspired protein system that gathers target metals into separable clusters. The approach is designed to reduce reliance on harsher processing methods while supporting more resilient supply chains for critical materials used across energy, electronics, transportation and advanced manufacturing markets. Because the system is genetically modular, the same platform may be adapted with different Lanmodulin-type metal-binding variants to support selective capture needs across…
Time remaining
Closes Dec 23, 2026
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Ref No.
BS-6AA966

