April 8, 2013 – The Office of the Secretary of Defense has awarded a contract to Skyhaven Systems, LLC to develop an innovative process for extracting and separating light rare earth metals from solution. Rare earth metals are valued for their unique magnetic, optical and catalytic properties. These materials are used in many clean energy technologies including wind turbines, electric vehicles, photovoltaic thin films and fluorescent lighting. Currently, China produces 95-97% of the world supply of rare earth metals and oxides, but is reducing exports and increasing prices to foreign consumers. The global impact of these restrictions is greatest in countries with large high-tech manufacturing sectors such as Japan, the USA and Germany. Lanthanides are typically found in mineral deposits. While the mining of the mineral deposits is fairly straightforward, the separation and purification of the individual lanthanide elements is laborious and energy intensive. New technologies are sought to enable more rapid, flexible, efficient, environmentally-friendly extraction and separation of individual lanthanides from aqueous mixtures with the goal of increasing the domestic supply of rare earth elements and decrease the costs of processing high purity metals. Skyhaven will be demonstrating a new method to extract and separate individual lanthanide metals through a selective process.