--- title: A solid-state “atomic channel” for separating rare earth... description: Researchers at UChicago PME, Northwestern University, and Argonne National Lab have developed a cleaner method to separate rare earth elements using layered... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/a-solid-state-atomic-channel-for-separating-rare-earth-elements-rrsk6cg7e twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: A solid-state “atomic channel” for separating rare earth elements | daily.dev og:description: Researchers at UChicago PME, Northwestern University, and Argonne National Lab have developed a cleaner method to separate rare earth elements using layered... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/a-solid-state-atomic-channel-for-separating-rare-earth-elements-rrsk6cg7e og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/rrSK6cg7e.png og:image:alt: A solid-state “atomic channel” for separating rare earth elements og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # A solid-state “atomic channel” for separating rare earth elements **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Researchers at UChicago PME, Northwestern University, and Argonne National Lab have developed a cleaner method to separate rare earth elements using layered manganese oxide. The technique exploits differences in the water shells surrounding rare earth ions, allowing heavier lanthanides with smaller hydration shells to bind more tightly in nanoscale channels. Adding magnesium ions as a scaffold (pinning) amplifies these small differences, boosting neodymium-over-lanthanum enrichment from 1.6-fold to 5.4-fold and achieving 97% purity after two cycles. Unlike conventional methods, the process uses only water and electricity—no toxic organic solvents or large amounts of acid. Quantum mechanical simulations using density functional theory and synchrotron X-ray data confirmed the atomic-level mechanisms. The method is not yet ready for industrial scale but demonstrates a new design principle for ion-selective separation. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 36 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-24). **TL;DR:** Commenters are genuinely interested in the science behind using layered manganese oxide to separate rare earth elements by exploiting differences in hydration shell size, drawing parallels to biological ion channels. A side thread devolves into a lengthy debate about the word 'literally.' **Sentiment:** 55% positive · 35% mixed · 10% skeptical **The case for** - The hydration-shell size difference mechanism is elegant and has interesting parallels to how biological ion channels (e.g., sodium/potassium selectivity filters) discriminate between ions. - Even at an early stage, proving the approach works has value for the field regardless of whether it scales industrially. - US rare earth processing capacity is gradually moving back domestically as more separation plants are built. **The pushback** - Industrial throughput and scalability of the new technique remain unclear. - The corporate video linked by one commenter was criticized as content-free marketing fluff with no substantive information. - Open questions remain about how the captured ions are flushed from the manganese oxide layers and whether the process works on raw ores or only pre-separated rare earth mixtures. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Commenters engage substantively with the science and supply-chain context, though enthusiasm is tempered by questions about industrial scalability and a lengthy off-topic 'literally' debate. **Hottest debate:** Whether the word 'literally' was used correctly when describing the corporate video as 'lube for the grinding wheels of commerce.' **Open questions** - Can the manganese oxide process work directly on raw ores, or only on already-beneficiated rare earth mixtures? - What is the end product — separated metal or intercalated manganese oxide? - How are captured ions flushed out of the layered manganese oxide after collection? - What would industrial throughput look like for this electrochemical separation approach? **Highlights** > Interestingly (well to me) this is also how some ion channels in cells work - the solvation shell (water cage) allows protein pores to distinguish between sodium and potassium. Not sure this is the best paper, just a random pick : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09692... Huh. More complex than I understood: "...there are two groups of hypotheses explaining the selectivity on the basis of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The first group mainly considers flexibility/mobility of the carboxyl groups in the EEEE ring that provides a preferable space-charge environment for partly hydrated Na+ ions to pass and an unfavorable environment for K+.19,20,21 The second group proposes the “steric” selectivity mechanism, suggesting that the SF of Navs is not wide enough to let a fully hydrated K+ pass through, while fully hydrated Na+ traverses through the pore without a significant barrier" Different paper about the 'selectivity filter' https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.... "The backbone carbonyl oxygens plus the hydroxyl group of the threonine form four ion binding sites, called S1 to S4 from the extracellular side (see Figure 1A), and they perfectly mimic the hydration shell of potassium ions" What I like about the selectivity filter is that it uses the backbone carbonyls. > — [gilleain on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027175) > > Chong Liu and her colleagues knew that one of the differences between rare earth ions was the size of the water shell surrounding each one when they are dissolved in solution. Lighter rare earths like lanthanum have larger first water shell, while heavier rare earths like dysprosium have a smaller first shell. Taking advantage of that size difference, Chong Liu’s group engineered manganese oxide so that the gaps between its stacked layers were only a few water molecules wide. Then, they squeezed raw mixtures of rare earth elements inside. Cool! Does this only work with a mixture of mostly rare earths, or can ores be "squeezed...inside"? Also, is the end product metal or intercalated manganese oxide? > — [JumpCrisscross on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49026990) > Very interesting, even if it is at an early stage and I have to wonder what the throughput would look like in an industrial process. There's value in proving that this approach can work even if it doesn't become the basis for separation plants in the future. > — [EA-3167 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027825) > Nice. Here's MP Minerals' plant for doing that, in Alliance, TX.[1] It's a modest sized plant in an industrial park. It's fed by a huge mine in California, which has an onsite beneficiation plant. Beneficiation is the first step of separation - sorting the good stuff out from the unwanted dirt, with rock crushers, screens, and flotation. This being "rare" earth mining, the amount of good stuff is tiny relative to the unwanted dirt. This new technology works on the separated good stuff. Although these separation plants aren't big compared to mines, US mines had been sending rare earth ores to China for processing. That's gradually moving back to the US as more separating plants are built. [1] https://vimeo.com/1062796280/dc953ac6d5? > — [Animats on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49026984) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025831) · 66 points · 36 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Breaking down rare earth element magnets for recycling](https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-rare-earth-element-magnets-for-recycling-lrtwsxgqp) · Ars Technica · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Rethinking Rare Earth Metals In Semiconductors Supply Chains](https://daily.dev/posts/rethinking-rare-earth-metals-in-semiconductors-supply-chains-01iukmbk8) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Flash Joule Heating Recovers The Good Stuff](https://daily.dev/posts/flash-joule-heating-recovers-the-good-stuff-kdiqz8jik) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [USA Rare Earth, Pasqal and Riven Test Quantum Machine Learning for Rare Earth Separation](https://daily.dev/posts/usa-rare-earth-pasqal-and-riven-test-quantum-machine-learning-for-rare-earth-separation-cnutxcr1i) · The Quantum Insider · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [IEEE Spectrum's Top Rare Earth Elements Stories of 2025](https://daily.dev/posts/ieee-spectrum-s-top-rare-earth-elements-stories-of-2025-ou2uo5myx) · IEEE Spectrum · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#science](https://daily.dev/tags/science) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/a-solid-state-atomic-channel-for-separating-rare-earth-elements-rrsk6cg7e) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"A solid-state “atomic channel” for separating rare earth elements","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-solid-state-atomic-channel-for-separating-rare-earth-elements-rrsk6cg7e","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-solid-state-atomic-channel-for-separating-rare-earth-elements-rrsk6cg7e"},"datePublished":"2026-07-23T21:45:34.072Z","dateModified":"2026-07-24T03:49:00.640Z","description":"Researchers at UChicago PME, Northwestern University, and Argonne National Lab have developed a cleaner method to separate rare earth elements using layered...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8e02236af41c3366cfd69b69959f3078?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8e02236af41c3366cfd69b69959f3078?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/a-solid-state-atomic-channel-for-separating-rare-earth-elements-rrsk6cg7e","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"science","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"A solid-state “atomic channel” for separating rare earth elements"}]} ```