Costs of nonmetals

Condensed periodic table excerpt
highlighting elements counted as nonmetals[n 1]

usually/always counted as a nonmetal

sometimes counted as a nonmetal

The status of astatine (At) has not been confirmed; it is treated in this article as a metal, as theory and experiments suggest.[1]
The metallic or nonmetallic status of copernicium (Cn), flerovium (Fl), and oganesson (Og) has not been confirmed.

Day to day costs of nonmetals (including metalloids which are here counted as nonmetals) will vary depending on purity, quantity,[n 2] market conditions, and supplier surcharges.[4]

Based on the available literature as of April 2023, the cited costs of most nonmetals are less than the US$0.74 per gram cost of silver.[5] The exceptions are boron, phosphorus, germanium, xenon, and radon (notionally):

* Boron costs around $25 per gram for 99.7% pure polycrystalline chunks with a particle size of about 1 cm.[6] Earlier, in 1997, boron was quoted at $280 per gram for polycrystalline 4-to-6-mm-diameter rods of 99.999% purity,[7] about 10 times the then $28.35 per gram cost of gold.[8]
* In 2020, phosphorus in its most-stable black form could "cost up to $1,000 per gram",[9] more than 15 times the cost of gold, whereas ordinary red phosphorus, in 2017, was priced at about $3.40 per kilogram.[10] Researchers hoped to be able to reduce the cost of black phosphorus to as low as $1 per gram.[9]
* Germanium and xenon cost about $1.30 and $7.60 per gram.[11]
* Up to 2013, radon was available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for $1,636 per 0.2 ml unit of issue, equivalent to about $86,000,000 per gram, with no indication of a discount for bulk quantities.[12]

Additional factors associated with the higher costs of some nonmetals include relative scarcity (Ge, Xe)[13] and costly production techniques (B, P, Ge).[14][9][13]

## See also[edit]

* Prices of chemical elements

## Notes[edit]

1. ^ The 28 lanthanide and actinide metals, which normally appear below the main body of the table, are not shown here
2. ^ For example, as at April 2023, the commercial price of silicon was $4 per pound or $0.0088 per gram.[2] On the other hand, the price quoted for a 335 gram sample of silicon for hobbyists and science enthusiasts was about $57, or 0.170 per gram, or about 20 times the commercial price.[3]

## References[edit]

### Citations[edit]

1. ^ Restrepo et al. 2006, p. 411; Thornton & Burdette 2010, p. 86; Hermann, Hoffmann & Ashcroft 2013, pp. 11604‒1‒11604‒5
2. ^ U.S. Geological Survey 2023, p. 153
3. ^ Billing Metals & Manufacturing
4. ^ U.S. Geological Survey 2023, p. 72, 86, 147
5. ^ U.S. Geological Survey 2023, pp. 32, 34, 78, 82, 84, 91, 156, 158, 160, 170, 176; Kopteva, Kalimullin & Tcvetkov 2021, p. 1; Oztemel, Salt & Salt 2022, p. 5; Neice & Zornow 2016, p. 1268; Howe-Grant 1995, p. 17; Dalakov, Neuber & Herzog R 2020; Boysen, Cristóbal & Hilbig 2020, pp. 475–489; Gardner & Menon 2018, p. 455; Rajarathnam & Assallo 2016, p. 3; Xia, Ning & Zhu 2020
6. ^ Chand, Kumar & Bhumla 2022, p. 22058
7. ^ Berger 1997, p. 42
8. ^ U.S. Geological Survey 1998
9. ^ a b c Boise State University 2020
10. ^ Hu, Shen & Yu 2017, p. 595
11. ^ Gardner & Menon 2018, p. 454; U.S. Geological Survey 2023, p. 78
12. ^ National Institute of Standards and Technology 2013
13. ^ a b Johansson, Zhu & Johansson 2016; Devroe et al. 2015
14. ^ Ball 2023, p. 1

### Bibliography[edit]

* Ball RW 2023, "Boron", in Bingham E, Cohrssen B and Powell CH, Patty's Toxicology, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, doi:10.1002/0471125474.tox045.pub3
* Berger LI 1997, Semiconductor Materials, CRC Press, Boca Raton, ISBN 978-0-8493-8912-2
* Billing Metals & Manufacturing, Silicon, Large Collectors sample. Element 14., accessed May 2, 2023
* Boise State University 2020, "Cost-effective manufacturing methods breathe new life into black phosphorus research", Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering, accessed July 9, 2021
* Boysen B, Cristóbal J & Hilbig J 2020, "Economic and environmental assessment of water reuse in industrial parks: case study based on a Model Industrial Park", Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 475–489, doi:10.2166/wrd.2020.034
* Chand H, Kumar A & Bhumla P 2022, "Scalable production of ultrathin boron nanosheets from a low-cost precursor", Advanced Materials Interfaces, vol. 9, no. 2, doi:10.1002/admi.202200508
* Dalakov P, Neuber E & Herzog R 2020, "Innovative neon refrigeration unit operating down to 30 K", MATEC Web of Conferences, vol. 324, doi:10.1051/matecconf/202032401003
* Gardner AJ & Menon DK 2018, "Moving to human trials for argon neuroprotection in neurological injury: A narrative review", British Journal of Anaesthesia, vol. 120, no. 4, pp. 453–468, doi:10.1016/j.bja.2017.10.017
* Hermann A, Hoffmann R & Ashcroft NW 2013, "Condensed astatine: Monatomic and metallic", Physical Review Letters, vol. 111, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.116404
* Howe-Grant MI (ed.) 1995, Fluorine Chemistry: A Comprehensive Treatment, John Wiley and Sons, New York, p. 17, ISBN 978-0-471-12031-5
* Hu Z, Shen Z & Yu JC 2017, "Phosphorus containing materials for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution", Green Chemistry, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 588–613, doi:10.1039/C6GC02825J
* Johansson MB, Zhu H & Johansson EMJ 2016, Extended photo-conversion spectrum in low-toxic bismuth halide perovskite solar cells", The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. vol. 7. no. 17, pp. 3467–3471, doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.6b0145
* Kopteva A, Kalimullin L & Tcvetkov P 2021, "Prospects and obstacles for green hydrogen production in Russia", Energies, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 1–21, doi:10.3390/en14030718
* Neice AE & Zornow MH 2016, "Editorial: Xenon anaesthesia for all, or only a select few?", Anaesthesia, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 1259–1272 (1268), doi:10.1111/anae.13569
* National Institute of Standards and Technology 2013, SRM 4972 – Radon-222 Emanation Standard, accessed August 1, 2021
* Oztemel BH, Salt I, Salt Y 2022, "Carbon dioxide utilization: Process simulation of synthetic fuel production from flue gases", Chemical Industry and Chemical Engineering Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 4, doi:10.2298/CICEQ211025005B
* Rajarathnam GP & Assallo AM 2016, The Zinc/bromine Flow Battery: Materials Challenges and Practical Solutions for Technology Advancement, Springer, Singapore, p. 3, ISBN 978-981-287-645-4
* Restrepo G, Llanos EJ & Mesa H 2006, "Topological space of the chemical elements and its properties", Journal of Mathematical Chemistry, vol. 39, doi:10.1007/s10910-005-9041-1
* Thornton BF & Burdette SC 2010, "Finding eka-iodine: Discovery priority in modern times", Bulletin for the history of chemistry, vol. 35, no. 2, accessed September 14, 2021
* U.S. Geological Survey 2023, Mineral Commodity Summaries, U.S. Geological Survey
* U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, viewed 3 October 2023
* U.S. Geological Survey 1998, Mineral Commodity Summaries, U.S. Geological Survey, accessed 27 August 2023
* Xia G-J, Ning Z-X & Zhu X-M 2020, “Effect of low-frequency oscillation on plasma focusing in krypton hall thruster", Journal of Propulsion and Power, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. Journal of Propulsion and Power, doi:10.2514/1.B37599