What is it?
The rare earth that amplifies light inside a fibre-optic cable without ever turning it back into electricity.
Why does it matter?
Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers are why an undersea cable can carry a signal for thousands of kilometres. The modern internet is built on them.
Deeper written sections for this material have not been published yet. Everything below is drawn straight from the source datasets and is complete.
Where it comes from in the rock
All ore minerals →These are the minerals that actually carry erbium. A deposit is only an orebody if one of them is concentrated enough to pay for digging it up.
Xenotime
A yttrium phosphate that also carries the heavy rare earths — dysprosium, terbium, erbium — that magnets need.
Ion-Adsorption Clay
Weathered granite where rare-earth ions cling loosely to clay surfaces. Grades are very low but the metal washes out…
Price
average, dollars per kilogram: Erbium oxide, 99.5%, minimum
Annual averagedollars per kilogram
Basis: average, dollars per kilogram: Erbium oxide, 99.5%, minimum. Annual averages as published in USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · source ↗. These are reference annual averages, not a live market quote.