This work presents an outline of the history of scientists and the city where the world’s first relativistic CRM device, known today as a Gyrotron, was created. CRM can be explained as “a microwave source of stimulated radiation based on the cyclotron resonance phenomenon.”. The story begins in 1898 with the establishment of the Emperor Nicolas II Warsaw Polytechnic Institute and ends in 1964 with the launch of the world’s first Gyrotron at the Nizhegorodsky Polytechnical Institute (later Gorky). The principle of gyrotron operation is very briefly presented in the paper, but mainly, according to the idea of this work, a lot of space is devoted to people, scientists and organizers of science in Gorky, the first who created this device, and therefore the work is limited to presenting the events related to the creation of the Gyrotron in 1959‒1967.

This paper presents the results of analyses of structure, volume and trends of demand for selected major critical raw materials (CRMs) suitable for the EU’s photovoltaic industry (PV). In order to achieve the EU’s goals in terms of the reduction of greenhouse gas emission and climate neutrality by 2050, the deployment of energy from renewable sources is of key importance. As a result, a substantial development of wind and solar technologies is expected. It is forecasted that increasing the production of PV panels will cause a significant growth in the demand for raw materials, including CRMs. Among these, silicon metal, gallium, germanium and indium were selected for detailed analyses while boron and phosphorus were excluded owing to small quantities being utilized in the PV sector. The estimated volume of the apparent consumption in the EU does not usually exceed 0.1 million tonnes for high purity silicon metal, a hundred tonnes for gallium and indium and several dozen tonnes for germanium. The major net-importers of analyzed CRMs were Germany, France, Spain, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Italy. The largest quantities of these metals have been utilized by Germany, France, Belgium, Slovakia and Italy. The PV applications constitute a marginal share in the total volume of analyzed metal total end-uses in the EU (10% for silicon metal, 5% for gallium, 13% for germanium and 9% for indium). As a result, there is a number of applications that compete for the same raw materials, particularly including the production of electronic equipment. The volume of the future demand for individual CRMs in PV sector will be strictly related to trends in the development of PV-panel production with crystalline silicon technology currently strongly dominating the global market.