How to Use coltan in a Sentence

coltan

noun
  • Some mines are run by warlords who work with rogue members of the Congolese army to smuggle the coltan out.
    — The Economist, 23 Jan. 2021
  • In central Africa, miners go into rain forests to dig for an ore called coltan that ends up in phone circuits.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 18 Jan. 2017
  • The tax on a kilogram of coltan and manganese was $7, while the tax on tin (cassiterite) was $4 per kilogram.
    — Paul Tilsley, Fox News, 31 Jan. 2025
  • Chávez that year said a large reserve of coltan was discovered in the country, according to Reuters.
    — John Towfighi, CNN Money, 11 Jan. 2026
  • The eastern region has rich deposits of minerals including tin, gold and coltan.
    — Bloomberg.com, 20 Dec. 2017
  • For two decades the country has struggled to defeat dozens of local and foreign militias in the east, which has deposits of tin, gold and coltan.
    — William Clowes, Bloomberg.com, 28 Sep. 2017
  • Most people don’t realize, but coltan is one of the most vital minerals on planet Earth.
    — Jason Johnson, The Root, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Bolívar, a sprawling state in Venezuela’s southeast, is home to steel and aluminum plants and large deposits of gold, diamonds and coltan.
    — New York Times, 19 Nov. 2021
  • The mines produce coltan — short for columbite-tantalite — an ore from which the metals tantalum and niobium are extracted.
    — David Yusufu Kibingila, Los Angeles Times, 23 May 2025
  • There is also active mining in the region for diamonds and coltan, a metallic ore that yields the rare-earth element tantalum used in cellphones.
    — Kejal Vyas |, WSJ, 20 Nov. 2018
  • The war was the beginning of a series of conflicts that swept the verdant hills of eastern Congo, a region rich with minerals such as gold, tin and coltan.
    — Gabriele Steinhauser, WSJ, 5 Oct. 2018
  • Rwanda is one of the world’s top suppliers of coltan and has surpassed DRC’s export of the mineral in recent years.
    — Nimi Princewill, CNN, 12 Feb. 2025
  • The region is rich in gold and coltan, a key mineral for the production of capacitors used in most consumer electronics such as laptops and smartphones.
    — Janvier Barhahiga and Monika Pronczuk The Associated Press, arkansasonline.com, 28 Feb. 2025
  • The demand for rare-earth minerals such as cobalt, coltan, lithium, and tantalum is driving efforts to source and secure these resources wherever they can be found.
    — Michael Albertus, Foreign Affairs, 4 Mar. 2025
  • But mining operations are destroying these forests to extract minerals such as coltan—used in making electronics like cell phones and laptops.
    — National Geographic, 21 Apr. 2020
  • The Afro-futurist musical, set in a hacker village made of computer parts, follows a miner who flees his life of digging up coltan after his brother’s tragic death.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 3 Aug. 2022
  • Through interviews with soldiers, politicians, and businesspeople, along with ordinary people, the book explores the role that resources such as gold and coltan played in fueling the conflict.
    — Peter Eichstaedt, Foreign Affairs, 1 Jan. 2011
  • Gold is abundant in the region, which also has rich deposits of rare metals such as coltan, used to make capacitors, and niobium, used to make superalloys for jet engines and hypersonic missiles.
    — Emmet Livingstone, The Dial, 20 Mar. 2025
  • Congo produces some two-thirds of the world’s cobalt, a mineral used in the production of lithium-ion batteries that power laptops and electric cars, and coltan, copper, tantalum and tin, all used in modern electronics.
    — Nicholas Bariyo, WSJ, 2 Jan. 2019
  • Congo produces some two-thirds of the world’s cobalt, a mineral key in the production of lithium-ion batteries that power laptops and electric cars, as well as coltan, copper, tantalum and tin, all used in modern electronics.
    — Gabriele Steinhauser, WSJ, 30 Dec. 2018
  • The country hosts numerous major mineral deposits—from cobalt and coltan to diamonds and gold—that power international economies and the technology companies that fuel them.
    — Akilah Sailers, Essence, 19 Dec. 2024
  • Then there were the critical minerals in their phones and computers—the coltan, cobalt, and lithium—that are mined in Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
    — Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker, 23 Mar. 2020
  • Roughly the size of Western Europe, the war-riven country is endowed with vast mineral wealth, including the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and coltan – both critical to the production of electronics.
    — Nimi Princewill, CNN, 12 Feb. 2025
  • These recoverable materials include gold, silver, copper, coltan, platinum, palladium, and other high-value metals.
    — National Geographic, 13 Dec. 2017
  • The war was fueled by the region’s immense natural riches, which include gold, diamonds, tin, timber and coltan, a mineral essential to the manufacture of smartphones and other consumer electronics.
    — Tommy Trenchard, Newsweek, 26 Dec. 2016
  • The Western lowland gorilla's native habitat in Africa is shrinking due in part to mining of a metallic ore called coltan, a key ingredient in manufacturing batteries, including the kind found in our phones.
    — Jennifer Larino, NOLA.com, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Over the past month, M23’s lightning advances have expanded its control over North Kivu province’s lucrative coltan, gold and tin ore mines, uprooting thousands in what was already one of the world’s most dire humanitarian crises.
    — Reuters, CNN, 8 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'coltan.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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