Employing Considerations of Criticality in Product Design

With no agreed-on definition of critical materials, product and process designers have been unable to systematically address the critical materials issue. Using a comprehensive methodology, we have determined the criticality of 62 metals and metalloids-approximately two-thirds of the periodic table. We illustrate how the analyses were performed, provide an overview of criticality at the global level for all elements, and then present examples of how the criticality information could be used in making material-related choices in product and process design.