Smash

Is Advancing Domestic Resource Independence Achievable?

The United States possesses an abundance of critical minerals, yet today’s mining and processing methods are largely optimized to isolate a single element at a time, discarding most of the remaining material as waste. 

Smash seeks to advance domestic resource independence by developing revolutionary separation technologies capable of simultaneously extracting multiple elements from diverse feedstocks, achieving dramatically higher yield, purity, and energy efficiency than existing approaches.

Over a 48-month, two-phase effort, Smash will pursue new separation paradigms that leverage parallel processing at scale. Smash aims to achieve efficient, near-zero-waste separations across the periodic table while remaining scalable to industrial mining operations. 

If successful, the program will strengthen domestic supply chains for critical elements, reduce reliance on foreign processing, and enable a secure, circular materials economy with applications spanning U.S. manufacturing and national security.