Sam Rubin, CEO LightPath Technologies Interview

Absolutely, thanks for bringing that up and having me over. Germanium is a raw material that is mined out of the ground, usually together with zinc mines, and is then refined in a very, I'd say, nasty or complicated process to get the raw material. Then the raw material is used a lot in semiconductors, in solar cells, in fiber optics, and in infrared optics. Actually, infrared optics is the largest market for germanium — 30% of all germanium goes into infrared optics, while into semiconductors it's only about 15 to 20% of the germanium goes in.

The problem here is that over 90% of the germanium comes from two countries: Russia and China. Russia is out of the gate since they went to war with Ukraine and are sanctioned — no one can do business with them, so supply of germanium from Russia is pretty much zero. China has been using germanium as a lever against some of the sanctions against it with AI chips and semiconductors. A year and a half ago they put in place some export control mechanism for germanium, which didn't really limit the export of germanium — it just created a mechanism where everyone that buys germanium from China has to get approval and a license. Now a year and a half later, China announced as a retaliation to the sanctions by the US, they're not going to export germanium to any US company or to any military use whatsoever — what's called dual use.

So before the war, before Russia went to war in Ukraine, it was something like 67% of the germanium was coming from China, 20-something percent, 25%, from Russia. With Russia gone, China is 80 to 90% of the supply of germanium now. This isn't something that is easy to scale up elsewhere. You can't just go and overnight start mining and refining germanium in the US or in Europe or in other places. It's going to take some years. Many people are working on that now and we're holding our fingers crossed, but we're looking at the time horizon of three to five years before really any meaningful output of germanium comes from any of these new ventures.

So a solution is needed now. For semiconductors and solar cells there isn't really an alternative — they have to use germanium. So any stockpiles of germanium that exist now in the West or any recycled germanium is very likely going to get prioritized to go into those two markets. In optics it isn't as painful because there are alternative materials. Specifically, LightPath — LightPath makes a glass called Black Diamond which is an alternative to germanium and can be used instead of that. And so we're seeing a great influx, and are very encouraged by it, of customers that want now to redesign their systems to use our glass instead of germanium, which in turn will free up available germanium for semiconductor and solar.

Yeah, so two of the materials that we make are more generic — BD6 and BD2 — and there are some companies that make similar materials to those two. But unfortunately no material is as fit as germanium is in some applications. And so when you come to replace germanium, you really need to look at multiple materials. And BD6, what we call BD6 and others call ILG-26, is a workhorse of the industry but is not enough to replace germanium alone. And so you need supplemental materials — you need to put into your system lenses made from other materials so that together they can do the same function as a germanium lens was doing.

For that we have materials that are exclusive to us that were developed at Naval Research Laboratories, and we have an exclusive license to make them. We produce here in the US, in Orlando, Florida, and that together with the more generic material like BD6 can be redesigned to replace germanium. And so this is something we started nearly three years ago in licensing it from NRL, then two years ago in a collaboration with Defense Logistics Agency — which is in charge of supply of critical materials — as well as European Space Agency and other government agencies, to qualify these materials and accelerate them into market, getting ready for this day. Exactly — and the day has come, and we have now both the generic BD6 and the exclusive materials from NRL.