You touched silicone this morning. Several times. In the gasket of your coffee maker. In your shampoo. Maybe in the contact lenses on your eyes, maybe in your child’s pacifier.
They didn't notice. Nobody notices.
Silicone keeps airplanes in the air, pacemakers beating, and electric cars from catching fire. It seals the International Space Station against the vacuum of space. It helped pioneer modern heart surgery. It makes the energy transition possible—yet it is itself nearly impossible to recycle.
The global silicone market is estimated to be worth between $25 billion and $33 billion.1 That sounds like a lot. By comparison, the smartphone market is worth 500 billion. Without silicones, many of these devices would be less durable, many medical systems more complex, and many energy technologies more expensive. A small market that keeps huge systems running.
What if this material just disappeared tomorrow morning?
I. 6:30 a.m.
You reach for your phone. The screen is damp. The silicone seal that used to protect the case from dust and water is gone. Moisture seeped in overnight. The display is flickering.
There’s a leak in the bathroom. The grout around the shower and sink has disappeared. The coffee maker is leaking. The shampoo feels rough and sticky. It’s missing dimethicone—the silicone that gives your hair its smoothness. You just didn’t know it.
The day hasn't even begun, and already the pattern is clear: silicone is found wherever two materials meet and the connection needs to work. Quietly. For years. Without anyone giving it a second thought.
II. The Commute to Work
They get into the car. They turn the key. Nothing happens.
In an internal combustion engine, silicone caps insulate the spark plug connectors against voltages ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 volts. Without them, the spark won’t jump across—or it will jump everywhere. The turbocharger hoses, which must withstand temperatures over 200 degrees: silicone rubber. The exhaust hangers, valve stem seals, cable bushings—all silicone.
But things get really serious when it comes to the vehicles on which Europe is staking its industrial future.
A modern EV battery pack operates at voltages of up to 800 volts. A thermally conductive silicone gel is sandwiched between the lithium-ion cells and the cooling plate to dissipate waste heat. An automatically applied silicone seal surrounds the housing and must maintain a hermetic seal for over 15 years and tens of thousands of temperature cycles.
Silicone barriers are located between the individual modules to protect against the most dangerous scenario imaginable: thermal runaway. A cell heats up to over 800 degrees. Certain silicone rubber formulations then do something that no other common elastomer can: they do not burn. They ceramify—forming a protective ceramic layer that delays the spread of fire. SAE studies document this effect for ceramifiable silicone composite sheets.2
Instead of accelerating the fire, they slow it down. That’s why silicon is now found in virtually every modern EV battery design, in the places where it really matters.
III. Waterfalls, War, and Sticky Crowds
The history of silicone doesn't have a single origin. It has three. And they all begin with people who were looking for something else.
The Skeptic. Frederic Stanley Kipping, a British chemist, spent three decades studying compounds of silicon and carbon. What he found were oils and sticky masses that could not be classified into any known category. In 1937, in his final publication, he wrote that the prospects were “anything but encouraging.” He died without knowing that his sticky masses would decide wars, repair hearts, and seal space stations.
The Engineer. Thirty years earlier in Norway, Sam Eyde had laid the foundation for something he himself could never have foreseen. Trained in Berlin, Eyde had acquired water rights to Norwegian waterfalls in Telemark around the turn of the century. In 1904, he founded the company Elkem together with the Swedish banking family Wallenberg—with the aim of harnessing hydropower for the electrochemical industry.17 Eyde’s vision was fertilizer. Not silicones. But the company he created would, 120 years later, become one of the world’s largest silicone manufacturers.
The War. In 1942, the electrical systems of Allied bombers failed at high altitudes. Moisture in the ignition electronics, arcing, engine failure. Conventional shellac insulation: useless in cold and wet conditions. Dr. Shailer Bass of Dow Corning developed a silicone grease for spark plugs and wiring harnesses. A simple product. But it made flights possible at altitudes and over distances that had previously been unreliable.
Almost at the same time, in 1944, chemists at Rhône-Poulenc began their own experiments with silicone in a laboratory in Saint-Fons near Lyon—independently of the Americans, using a process based on organic silicates.18 In 1948, industrial production began under the brand name RHODORSIL. By 1970, thanks to Saint-Fons, France was the world’s fourth-largest silicone producer.18
Three threads that have woven together over the course of a century. Rhône-Poulenc became Rhodia, Rhodia became Bluestar Silicones, and since 2017, the silicone division has been known as Elkem Silicones—once again reunited with the Norwegian parent company that Sam Eyde founded in 1904 near a waterfall. The plant in Saint-Fons is still in operation today.
And then: Silly Putty. In 1943, a GE engineer was searching for synthetic rubber. What he found bounced, reproduced newspaper print, and shattered like glass when struck hard. As rubber: useless. A toy retailer packaged it in plastic eggs. 300 million units sold. In 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts took it into lunar orbit to secure tools in zero gravity.
From a military secret to a children’s toy to space. In 25 years.
IV. A sphere barely larger than a marble
In September 1960, surgeon Albert Starr opened the chest of a 52-year-old man in an operating room at the University of Oregon. What he implanted in him was something that had never been done before: an artificial heart valve.3
The idea didn’t come from a doctor, but from Lowell Edwards—a retired hydraulic engineer who had marched into Starr’s office with a sketch. A metal cage containing a small ball that opened and closed with every heartbeat. The cage: Stellite, a cobalt-chromium alloy. The ball: Silastic, a silicone elastomer from Dow Corning.4
Before this invention, surgeons could at best try to widen a narrowed heart valve with their finger—blindly, through an incision in the beating heart.
The silicone ball had to open and close with every heartbeat. 100,000 times a day. 36 million times a year. Without tiring. Without damaging the blood. Without being rejected by the body. No other material available at the time offered this complete set of properties. Metal corroded. Plastics were not biocompatible. Natural rubber degraded.
The first patient lived for ten years. He died after falling off a ladder while painting his house.5 Not from heart disease.
By 1989, more than 50,000 of these valves had been implanted—without a single documented case of structural material failure over a 22-year period.3
A silicone ball, barely larger than a marble. That’s how a new chapter in heart surgery began.
V. The Invisible Ring
On May 30, 2020, while the world was in lockdown, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon docked with the International Space Station. Billions watched. No one mentioned the seal.
Fifteen years of development work had gone into it. Pat Dunlap and Bruce Steinetz had led the team at the NASA Glenn Research Center.6 The requirements: functionality in a vacuum, extreme temperature fluctuations, UV resistance. And not too sticky—otherwise it would have blocked the docking mechanism. Each ring: cast in a single mold, without seams, because every joint is a weak point.
The material: silicone rubber. A NASA technical report describes silicone rubber as the only class of space-qualified elastomeric sealing materials that functions across the expected temperature range.7
Every time a spacecraft docks with the ISS—Crew Dragon, Soyuz, Cygnus—a silicone ring keeps the crew’s breathing air separated from the vacuum of space.6
Further out: When the Curiosity rover entered the Martian atmosphere in 2012, its heat shield reached over 2,000 degrees. The joints between the tiles were sealed with RTV 560—a silicone rubber. The same class of material used to seal bathroom tiles on Earth held a nuclear-powered robot together as it entered an alien atmosphere. When the Perseverance rover landed in 2021, high-purity silicon from Elkem was used in the thermal batteries of the landing system—manufactured in Norway, landed on another planet.19
And Neil Armstrong’s moon boots? Silicone soles. The most famous footprint in human history, left by a material that had been dismissed as a “sticky mess” 26 years earlier.
VI. 73 seconds
On January 28, 1986, an unusually cold morning in Florida, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off. Seventy-three seconds later, it broke apart. Seven people died.
The technical cause: O-rings made of Viton fluorocarbon rubber in the connectors of the solid-fuel rockets had lost their elasticity in the cold.8 Hot combustion gases leaked through the leak. The external tank ignited.
It wasn’t just a material failure. It was a combination of weaknesses in the joint design, known erosion issues, management pressure, and the decision to launch at those temperatures despite explicit warnings from engineers. The Rogers Commission documented how cold temperatures significantly reduced the resilience of the O-rings and prolonged their recovery time.8 9
What does this story have to do with an article about silicone?
The answer is inconvenient. Viton is an excellent high-temperature rubber. But it hardens in the cold. Silicone rubber is one of the few elastomers that retains its flexibility down to minus 60 degrees—exactly the property that was missing on that January morning. Only a comprehensive engineering analysis can answer whether silicone would have been the better choice under the specific conditions of the SRB joints. But the lesson is universal.
Temperature is a material parameter. It is not weather. And the consequences of a wrong decision can be irreversible.
VII. The Powder Keg
Now it's getting geopolitical.
China controls over 70 percent of global silicon production. The trend is toward nearly 80 percent.11 A significant portion comes from Xinjiang. In 2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order against silica-based products from the largest Chinese producer—based on information indicating forced labor.12
Europe produces less than eight percent of the world’s silicon metal. Yet European industries—automotive, medical technology, electronics, and renewable energy—are entirely dependent on it. The EU has responded: The Critical Raw Materials Act lists “silicon metal” as a strategic raw material.13 On the same level as lithium, cobalt, and rare earths.
This is where Europe’s own production base becomes a matter of survival. Elkem operates a network of silicon smelters in Norway—Fiskaa, Thamshavn, Rana, Salten, Bremanger—most of which run on the hydroelectric power that Sam Eyde harnessed 120 years ago.20 Wacker Chemie also operates a plant there, which covers about a quarter of the company’s global demand. These are Europe’s most important supply lines for the raw material, without which no silicone production is possible.
As a non-EU member, Switzerland is not covered by the Critical Raw Materials Act. But Swiss industry—precision instruments, medical technology, watches, automotive suppliers—is just as dependent.
Anyone who thinks the silicon market is a stable, uneventful commodity market hasn’t been paying attention in recent years. Silicon metal prices skyrocketed by about 300 percent in 2021. That could happen again at any time.
VIII. The Paradox
Here, history contradicts itself. And that is precisely what makes it relevant.
Silicones are key components of the energy transition. Without them, there would be no solar panels—each module contains several hundred grams of silicone encapsulant. Without them, there would be no efficient wind turbines, no electric cars, no LED lighting, and no energy-efficient building envelopes.
An industry study by the Global Silicones Council concludes that the greenhouse gas savings achieved through the use of silicone products are, on average, 14 times greater than the emissions resulting from their manufacture and disposal.14 Whether the methodology stands up to scrutiny remains to be seen—but the basic logic is plausible.
But.
Global silicone production stands at around 3 million tons and is growing by 5 to 6 percent annually. What happens to cured silicone seals after 20 years? What about the encapsulants from dismantled solar panels? What about the hoses from the engine compartment of a scrapped car?
Landfill. Incineration. Silicon is not biodegradable; it persists in the environment, and the percentage that is chemically recycled is in the low single digits. The production of silicon metal requires temperatures of 2,000 degrees in electric arc furnaces—in China, these are primarily powered by coal-generated electricity.
The materials that make the green transition possible are themselves difficult to recycle.
Europe's response comes from two directions.
First: cleaner production. In Rana, northern Norway, Elkem is running a carbon capture pilot project at its ferrosilicon plant—the first of its kind in the entire silicon industry.21 The plant is powered by hydropower. It is an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of an industry whose products reduce the carbon footprint of nearly all other industries.
Second—and this is the real news: In April 2025, researchers from the University of Lyon and the CNRS, in collaboration with Elkem Silicones, published a process in *Science*. It involves a gallium-catalyzed depolymerization that converts all types of silicone waste—including highly cross-linked products such as baking pans—back into chlorosilane building blocks at just 40 degrees Celsius.15 16
40 degrees instead of 2,000 degrees. A 97 percent yield in the lab. From the baking pan back to the monomer.
Elkem researcher Aurélie Boulegue-Mondière, a co-author of the study, works at the "ATRiON" R&I center in Saint-Fons, near Lyon.22 The same site where Rhône-Poulenc conducted Europe’s very first silicone experiments in 1944. The pilot trials for scaling up are underway at Activation in Chassieu—also in the Lyon region.22
Eighty years after the first European experiments with silicone, researchers are working at the same location to bring the cycle full circle.
If this process is scaled up for industrial use—and Elkem is not involved merely out of academic interest—it would be the first realistic path toward a true circular economy for silicones.
The most important materials of our time are often the ones nobody talks about. Not because they’re unimportant, but because they do their job so well that they become invisible.
Until they're gone.
Anyone working with critical materials needs more than just a supplier. They need a partner who understands material selection. SILITECH AG supports industrial customers in the DACH region with the selection and supply of silicones, adhesives, sealants, and lubricants—with technical expertise, a pragmatic approach, and direct from our own warehouse.
Sources
- Market estimates vary depending on the definition and time horizon. Grand View Research estimates the global silicon market at approximately USD 24.3 billion in 2025, with a forecast of USD 37.3 billion by 2033. Other analysts (IMARC, Persistence Market Research) cite slightly different figures.
- SAE Technical Paper (2024) on ceramifiable silicone rubber composite sheets and their effect on thermal runaway propagation in battery packs.
- Lasker Foundation: “Prosthetic Aortic and Mitral Valves” – Entry on Albert Starr and Lowell Edwards. laskerfoundation.org
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History: Starr-Edwards Heart Valve, Object Description. americanhistory.si.edu
- NIH/PMC: “Development of the Starr-Edwards Heart Valve” (1998). pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- NASA: “Sealed with Care – A Q&A” (Docking Seals, Pat Dunlap, Bruce Steinetz). nasa.gov
- NASA Glenn Technical Report (2010): Silicone rubber as the only class of space-qualified elastomeric sealing materials across the expected temperature range. ntrs.nasa.gov
- NASA Rogers Commission Report, Chapter IV: Temperature Dependence of O-Ring Resilience. nasa.gov
- NASA Rogers Commission Report, Chapter VI: Design and Materials of the Solid Rocket Booster Joints. nasa.gov
- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries – Silicon (2024/2025): China’s share of global production >70% (2023), “almost 80%” (2024). pubs.usgs.gov
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Withhold Release Order (2021) regarding silica-based products. cbp.gov
- EU Critical Raw Materials Act (2024), Annex I: “silicon metal” as a strategic raw material. eur-lex.europa.eu
- Global Silicones Council (2024): Industry study on the greenhouse gas footprint of silicone products throughout their life cycle.
- Science (2025): Gallium-catalyzed depolymerization of silicone waste at 40 °C. Vũ, Boulegue-Mondière, Durand, Munsch et al. science.org
- CNRS Press Release (2025): “Universal Recycling Process.” cnrs.fr
- Sam Eyde founded Elkem on January 2, 1904, together with Knut Tillberg and the Swedish bankers Knut and Marcus Wallenberg. Sources: Elkem 120th Anniversary (2024); Wikipedia: Sam Eyde.
- Elkem Silicones Company History: First silicone experiments at Rhône-Poulenc in Saint-Fons in 1944; RHODORSIL from 1948 onward. elkem.com
- Elkem's 120th Anniversary (2024): Elkem silicon in the Perseverance rover's thermal batteries. prnewswire.co.uk
- Elkem Silicon Products: Plants in Fiskaa, Thamshavn, Rana, Salten, Bremanger, Bjølvefossen, Herøya (NO), and Grundartangi (IS). elkem.com
- Elkem: Rana Carbon Capture Pilot Project, the first of its kind in the silicone industry. elkem.com
- Elkem (2025): Boulegue-Mondière, R&I Center “ATRiON,” Saint-Fons; pilot trials at Activation, Chassieu. elkem.com
You touched silicone this morning. Several times. In the gasket of your coffee maker. In your shampoo. Maybe in the contact lenses on your eyes, maybe in your child’s pacifier.
They didn't notice. Nobody notices.
Silicone keeps airplanes in the air, pacemakers beating, and electric cars from catching fire. It seals the International Space Station against the vacuum of space. It helped pioneer modern heart surgery. It makes the energy transition possible—yet it is itself nearly impossible to recycle.
The global silicone market is estimated to be worth between $25 billion and $33 billion.1 That sounds like a lot. By comparison, the smartphone market is worth 500 billion. Without silicones, many of these devices would be less durable, many medical systems more complex, and many energy technologies more expensive. A small market that keeps huge systems running.
What if this material just disappeared tomorrow morning?
I. 6:30 a.m.
You reach for your phone. The screen is damp. The silicone seal that used to protect the case from dust and water is gone. Moisture seeped in overnight. The display is flickering.
There’s a leak in the bathroom. The grout around the shower and sink has disappeared. The coffee maker is leaking. The shampoo feels rough and sticky. It’s missing dimethicone—the silicone that gives your hair its smoothness. You just didn’t know it.
The day hasn't even begun, and already the pattern is clear: silicone is found wherever two materials meet and the connection needs to work. Quietly. For years. Without anyone giving it a second thought.
II. The Commute to Work
They get into the car. They turn the key. Nothing happens.
In an internal combustion engine, silicone caps insulate the spark plug connectors against voltages ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 volts. Without them, the spark won’t jump across—or it will jump everywhere. The turbocharger hoses, which must withstand temperatures over 200 degrees: silicone rubber. The exhaust hangers, valve stem seals, cable bushings—all silicone.
But things get really serious when it comes to the vehicles on which Europe is staking its industrial future.
A modern EV battery pack operates at voltages of up to 800 volts. A thermally conductive silicone gel is sandwiched between the lithium-ion cells and the cooling plate to dissipate waste heat. An automatically applied silicone seal surrounds the housing and must maintain a hermetic seal for over 15 years and tens of thousands of temperature cycles.
Silicone barriers are located between the individual modules to protect against the most dangerous scenario imaginable: thermal runaway. A cell heats up to over 800 degrees. Certain silicone rubber formulations then do something that no other common elastomer can: they do not burn. They ceramify—forming a protective ceramic layer that delays the spread of fire. SAE studies document this effect for ceramifiable silicone composite sheets.2
Instead of accelerating the fire, they slow it down. That’s why silicon is now found in virtually every modern EV battery design, in the places where it really matters.
III. Waterfalls, War, and Sticky Crowds
The history of silicone doesn't have a single origin. It has three. And they all begin with people who were looking for something else.
The Skeptic. Frederic Stanley Kipping, a British chemist, spent three decades studying compounds of silicon and carbon. What he found were oils and sticky masses that could not be classified into any known category. In 1937, in his final publication, he wrote that the prospects were “anything but encouraging.” He died without knowing that his sticky masses would decide wars, repair hearts, and seal space stations.
The Engineer. Thirty years earlier in Norway, Sam Eyde had laid the foundation for something he himself could never have foreseen. Trained in Berlin, Eyde had acquired water rights to Norwegian waterfalls in Telemark around the turn of the century. In 1904, he founded the company Elkem together with the Swedish banking family Wallenberg—with the aim of harnessing hydropower for the electrochemical industry.17 Eyde’s vision was fertilizer. Not silicones. But the company he created would, 120 years later, become one of the world’s largest silicone manufacturers.
The War. In 1942, the electrical systems of Allied bombers failed at high altitudes. Moisture in the ignition electronics, arcing, engine failure. Conventional shellac insulation: useless in cold and wet conditions. Dr. Shailer Bass of Dow Corning developed a silicone grease for spark plugs and wiring harnesses. A simple product. But it made flights possible at altitudes and over distances that had previously been unreliable.
Almost at the same time, in 1944, chemists at Rhône-Poulenc began their own experiments with silicone in a laboratory in Saint-Fons near Lyon—independently of the Americans, using a process based on organic silicates.18 In 1948, industrial production began under the brand name RHODORSIL. By 1970, thanks to Saint-Fons, France was the world’s fourth-largest silicone producer.18
Three threads that have woven together over the course of a century. Rhône-Poulenc became Rhodia, Rhodia became Bluestar Silicones, and since 2017, the silicone division has been known as Elkem Silicones—once again reunited with the Norwegian parent company that Sam Eyde founded in 1904 near a waterfall. The plant in Saint-Fons is still in operation today.
And then: Silly Putty. In 1943, a GE engineer was searching for synthetic rubber. What he found bounced, reproduced newspaper print, and shattered like glass when struck hard. As rubber: useless. A toy retailer packaged it in plastic eggs. 300 million units sold. In 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts took it into lunar orbit to secure tools in zero gravity.
From a military secret to a children’s toy to space. In 25 years.
IV. A sphere barely larger than a marble
In September 1960, surgeon Albert Starr opened the chest of a 52-year-old man in an operating room at the University of Oregon. What he implanted in him was something that had never been done before: an artificial heart valve.3
The idea didn’t come from a doctor, but from Lowell Edwards—a retired hydraulic engineer who had marched into Starr’s office with a sketch. A metal cage containing a small ball that opened and closed with every heartbeat. The cage: Stellite, a cobalt-chromium alloy. The ball: Silastic, a silicone elastomer from Dow Corning.4
Before this invention, surgeons could at best try to widen a narrowed heart valve with their finger—blindly, through an incision in the beating heart.
The silicone ball had to open and close with every heartbeat. 100,000 times a day. 36 million times a year. Without tiring. Without damaging the blood. Without being rejected by the body. No other material available at the time offered this complete set of properties. Metal corroded. Plastics were not biocompatible. Natural rubber degraded.
The first patient lived for ten years. He died after falling off a ladder while painting his house.5 Not from heart disease.
By 1989, more than 50,000 of these valves had been implanted—without a single documented case of structural material failure over a 22-year period.3
A silicone ball, barely larger than a marble. That’s how a new chapter in heart surgery began.
V. The Invisible Ring
On May 30, 2020, while the world was in lockdown, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon docked with the International Space Station. Billions watched. No one mentioned the seal.
Fifteen years of development work had gone into it. Pat Dunlap and Bruce Steinetz had led the team at the NASA Glenn Research Center.6 The requirements: functionality in a vacuum, extreme temperature fluctuations, UV resistance. And not too sticky—otherwise it would have blocked the docking mechanism. Each ring: cast in a single mold, without seams, because every joint is a weak point.
The material: silicone rubber. A NASA technical report describes silicone rubber as the only class of space-qualified elastomeric sealing materials that functions across the expected temperature range.7
Every time a spacecraft docks with the ISS—Crew Dragon, Soyuz, Cygnus—a silicone ring keeps the crew’s breathing air separated from the vacuum of space.6
Further out: When the Curiosity rover entered the Martian atmosphere in 2012, its heat shield reached over 2,000 degrees. The joints between the tiles were sealed with RTV 560—a silicone rubber. The same class of material used to seal bathroom tiles on Earth held a nuclear-powered robot together as it entered an alien atmosphere. When the Perseverance rover landed in 2021, high-purity silicon from Elkem was used in the thermal batteries of the landing system—manufactured in Norway, landed on another planet.19
And Neil Armstrong’s moon boots? Silicone soles. The most famous footprint in human history, left by a material that had been dismissed as a “sticky mess” 26 years earlier.
VI. 73 seconds
On January 28, 1986, an unusually cold morning in Florida, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off. Seventy-three seconds later, it broke apart. Seven people died.
The technical cause: O-rings made of Viton fluorocarbon rubber in the connectors of the solid-fuel rockets had lost their elasticity in the cold.8 Hot combustion gases leaked through the leak. The external tank ignited.
It wasn’t just a material failure. It was a combination of weaknesses in the joint design, known erosion issues, management pressure, and the decision to launch at those temperatures despite explicit warnings from engineers. The Rogers Commission documented how cold temperatures significantly reduced the resilience of the O-rings and prolonged their recovery time.8 9
What does this story have to do with an article about silicone?
The answer is inconvenient. Viton is an excellent high-temperature rubber. But it hardens in the cold. Silicone rubber is one of the few elastomers that retains its flexibility down to minus 60 degrees—exactly the property that was missing on that January morning. Only a comprehensive engineering analysis can answer whether silicone would have been the better choice under the specific conditions of the SRB joints. But the lesson is universal.
Temperature is a material parameter. It is not weather. And the consequences of a wrong decision can be irreversible.
VII. The Powder Keg
Now it's getting geopolitical.
China controls over 70 percent of global silicon production. The trend is toward nearly 80 percent.11 A significant portion comes from Xinjiang. In 2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order against silica-based products from the largest Chinese producer—based on information indicating forced labor.12
Europe produces less than eight percent of the world’s silicon metal. Yet European industries—automotive, medical technology, electronics, and renewable energy—are entirely dependent on it. The EU has responded: The Critical Raw Materials Act lists “silicon metal” as a strategic raw material.13 On the same level as lithium, cobalt, and rare earths.
This is where Europe’s own production base becomes a matter of survival. Elkem operates a network of silicon smelters in Norway—Fiskaa, Thamshavn, Rana, Salten, Bremanger—most of which run on the hydroelectric power that Sam Eyde harnessed 120 years ago.20 Wacker Chemie also operates a plant there, which covers about a quarter of the company’s global demand. These are Europe’s most important supply lines for the raw material, without which no silicone production is possible.
As a non-EU member, Switzerland is not covered by the Critical Raw Materials Act. But Swiss industry—precision instruments, medical technology, watches, automotive suppliers—is just as dependent.
Anyone who thinks the silicon market is a stable, uneventful commodity market hasn’t been paying attention in recent years. Silicon metal prices skyrocketed by about 300 percent in 2021. That could happen again at any time.
VIII. The Paradox
Here, history contradicts itself. And that is precisely what makes it relevant.
Silicones are key components of the energy transition. Without them, there would be no solar panels—each module contains several hundred grams of silicone encapsulant. Without them, there would be no efficient wind turbines, no electric cars, no LED lighting, and no energy-efficient building envelopes.
An industry study by the Global Silicones Council concludes that the greenhouse gas savings achieved through the use of silicone products are, on average, 14 times greater than the emissions resulting from their manufacture and disposal.14 Whether the methodology stands up to scrutiny remains to be seen—but the basic logic is plausible.
But.
Global silicone production stands at around 3 million tons and is growing by 5 to 6 percent annually. What happens to cured silicone seals after 20 years? What about the encapsulants from dismantled solar panels? What about the hoses from the engine compartment of a scrapped car?
Landfill. Incineration. Silicon is not biodegradable; it persists in the environment, and the percentage that is chemically recycled is in the low single digits. The production of silicon metal requires temperatures of 2,000 degrees in electric arc furnaces—in China, these are primarily powered by coal-generated electricity.
The materials that make the green transition possible are themselves difficult to recycle.
Europe's response comes from two directions.
First: cleaner production. In Rana, northern Norway, Elkem is running a carbon capture pilot project at its ferrosilicon plant—the first of its kind in the entire silicon industry.21 The plant is powered by hydropower. It is an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of an industry whose products reduce the carbon footprint of nearly all other industries.
Second—and this is the real news: In April 2025, researchers from the University of Lyon and the CNRS, in collaboration with Elkem Silicones, published a process in *Science*. It involves a gallium-catalyzed depolymerization that converts all types of silicone waste—including highly cross-linked products such as baking pans—back into chlorosilane building blocks at just 40 degrees Celsius.15 16
40 degrees instead of 2,000 degrees. A 97 percent yield in the lab. From the baking pan back to the monomer.
Elkem researcher Aurélie Boulegue-Mondière, a co-author of the study, works at the "ATRiON" R&I center in Saint-Fons, near Lyon.22 The same site where Rhône-Poulenc conducted Europe’s very first silicone experiments in 1944. The pilot trials for scaling up are underway at Activation in Chassieu—also in the Lyon region.22
Eighty years after the first European experiments with silicone, researchers are working at the same location to bring the cycle full circle.
If this process is scaled up for industrial use—and Elkem is not involved merely out of academic interest—it would be the first realistic path toward a true circular economy for silicones.
The most important materials of our time are often the ones nobody talks about. Not because they’re unimportant, but because they do their job so well that they become invisible.
Until they're gone.
Anyone working with critical materials needs more than just a supplier. They need a partner who understands material selection. SILITECH AG supports industrial customers in the DACH region with the selection and supply of silicones, adhesives, sealants, and lubricants—with technical expertise, a pragmatic approach, and direct from our own warehouse.
Sources
- Market estimates vary depending on the definition and time horizon. Grand View Research estimates the global silicon market at approximately USD 24.3 billion in 2025, with a forecast of USD 37.3 billion by 2033. Other analysts (IMARC, Persistence Market Research) cite slightly different figures.
- SAE Technical Paper (2024) on ceramifiable silicone rubber composite sheets and their effect on thermal runaway propagation in battery packs.
- Lasker Foundation: “Prosthetic Aortic and Mitral Valves” – Entry on Albert Starr and Lowell Edwards. laskerfoundation.org
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History: Starr-Edwards Heart Valve, Object Description. americanhistory.si.edu
- NIH/PMC: “Development of the Starr-Edwards Heart Valve” (1998). pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- NASA: “Sealed with Care – A Q&A” (Docking Seals, Pat Dunlap, Bruce Steinetz). nasa.gov
- NASA Glenn Technical Report (2010): Silicone rubber as the only class of space-qualified elastomeric sealing materials across the expected temperature range. ntrs.nasa.gov
- NASA Rogers Commission Report, Chapter IV: Temperature Dependence of O-Ring Resilience. nasa.gov
- NASA Rogers Commission Report, Chapter VI: Design and Materials of the Solid Rocket Booster Joints. nasa.gov
- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries – Silicon (2024/2025): China’s share of global production >70% (2023), “almost 80%” (2024). pubs.usgs.gov
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Withhold Release Order (2021) regarding silica-based products. cbp.gov
- EU Critical Raw Materials Act (2024), Annex I: “silicon metal” as a strategic raw material. eur-lex.europa.eu
- Global Silicones Council (2024): Industry study on the greenhouse gas footprint of silicone products throughout their life cycle.
- Science (2025): Gallium-catalyzed depolymerization of silicone waste at 40 °C. Vũ, Boulegue-Mondière, Durand, Munsch et al. science.org
- CNRS Press Release (2025): “Universal Recycling Process.” cnrs.fr
- Sam Eyde founded Elkem on January 2, 1904, together with Knut Tillberg and the Swedish bankers Knut and Marcus Wallenberg. Sources: Elkem 120th Anniversary (2024); Wikipedia: Sam Eyde.
- Elkem Silicones Company History: First silicone experiments at Rhône-Poulenc in Saint-Fons in 1944; RHODORSIL from 1948 onward. elkem.com
- Elkem's 120th Anniversary (2024): Elkem silicon in the Perseverance rover's thermal batteries. prnewswire.co.uk
- Elkem Silicon Products: Plants in Fiskaa, Thamshavn, Rana, Salten, Bremanger, Bjølvefossen, Herøya (NO), and Grundartangi (IS). elkem.com
- Elkem: Rana Carbon Capture Pilot Project, the first of its kind in the silicone industry. elkem.com
- Elkem (2025): Boulegue-Mondière, R&I Center “ATRiON,” Saint-Fons; pilot trials at Activation, Chassieu. elkem.com
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