#68 Er

Erbium Price

Heavy Rare Earth Suspended

Used in fiber optic amplifiers and glass colorant.

Main trade forms: Oxide (Er₂O₃)
Available from: CN, AU

Last update: 2026-04-04
6 records

Retail Reference

$3736/kg

Metal 99.95% · 9 g

Luciteria · US · 2026-04-04

Bulk Benchmark

No commodity benchmark available

Suspended Export controls paused under November 2025 suspension orders. Regulatory Tracker →

Erbium was added to China’s expanded heavy rare earth control scope under the October 2025 escalation announcements (Nos. 55–58, 61, 62) [2]. The Er licensing requirement was suspended on 7–9 November 2025 by Announcements Nos. 70 and 72 of 2025 [3].

Suspension runs until 28 November 2026. The risk to global telecom infrastructure is significant: Er³⁺ is the optical gain medium in every long-haul fibre-optic amplifier in service today.

Applications

Application	Role	Significance
EDFA optical amplifiers	Er³⁺ dopant in silica fibre, pumped at 980/1480 nm	The basis of every long-haul fibre-optic communications link — subsea cables, terrestrial backbones, data-centre interconnects. Operates in the 1550 nm telecom window. No substitute exists.
Erbium lasers	Er:YAG (2940 nm), Er:glass	Dental and dermatological lasers; strongly absorbed by water for precise tissue ablation
Pink-tint glass	Er₂O₃ in soda-lime glass	Decorative glass colouring; absorbs in green/yellow
Nuclear control rods	Er₂O₃ burnable poison in reactor fuel	Used in CANDU and some PWR designs to manage reactivity
Up-conversion phosphors	Er/Yb co-doped fluorides and oxides	IR-to-visible up-conversion for displays, security marking, biomedical imaging

Market & Supply

Global Er₂O₃ production ~700 t/year (REO basis)

China refined supply share ~99%

Co-produced with Y, Yb, Tm, Lu, Ho (HREE concentrate)

Telecom share of demand ~40% (EDFA fibre)

Current export control Suspended until Nov 2026 [3]

Oxide retail (1 kg) $28–$38/kg

Metal retail (gram-scale) $3,700–$27,500/kg

Snap-back risk 28 November 2026

Verified Offers

Erbium oxide remains cheap (~$30/kg) but the gram-scale metal market is highly fragmented — the auto-rendered table shows quotations spanning an order of magnitude depending on purity, form factor, and seller.

Date	Form	Purity	USD/kg	Seller	Country
2026-03-15	Oxide	99.9% (3N)	$38	Stanford Advanced Materials	US
2026-03-15	Oxide	99.9% (3N)	$28	Edgetech Industries	CN
2026-03-15	Oxide	99.9% (3N)	$32	ALB Materials	CN
2026-04-04	Metal	99.9% (3N)	$10950	snaucke-elements (eBay)	NL
2026-04-04	Metal	99.95%	$3736	Luciteria	US
2026-04-04	Metal	99.95%	$27530	novaelements (eBay)	IT

Important Notes

Snap-back risk on 28 November 2026 Erbium controls were imposed in October 2025 then suspended in November 2025. If the suspension is not renewed by 28 November 2026, MOFCOM licensing resumes. A renewed Er control would directly threaten EDFA fibre production and global telecom backbone capacity expansions.

Telecom infrastructure dependency Er³⁺-doped fibre amplifiers are the only commercially viable optical amplifier for the 1550 nm low-loss telecom window. Every transatlantic submarine cable, terrestrial backbone, and hyperscaler data-centre interconnect uses EDFAs. There is no engineering substitute.

Co-production with Yb and Tm Er is recovered alongside Yb, Tm, and Lu in the heavy rare earth separation cascade. Production cannot be scaled independently without disrupting the rest of the HREE basket.

Physical Properties [1]

Z: 68 · A_r: 167.26 u · ρ: 9.066 g/cm³ · T_m: 1,529 °C · T_b: 2,868 °C
Crystal: hcp · Config: [Xe]4f¹²6s² · Ox. states: +3

References

Wolfram Alpha, “Erbium element.” wolframalpha.com.
MOFCOM Announcements No. 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, and 62 of 2025 (October 2025 escalation), effective 9 October 2025.
MOFCOM Announcements No. 70 and No. 72 of 2025 (suspension orders), 7–9 November 2025.