Chemical elements · Directory entry

Indium

Element 49 · chemical symbol: In

These Vrulum profiles mention Indium by name. Read each profile for its specific context; a mention alone does not establish composition, performance or use of the pure element.

For periodic-table data and other properties, consult the Royal Society of Chemistry periodic table.

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Research and prototypes

In-space manufacturing

In-space manufacturing means making, repairing or recycling parts and materials in orbit rather than launching everything from Earth. Early results include optical fibre drawn on the International Space Station, a small semiconductor crystal grown on the China Space Station, and a pharmaceutical crystal form made on a commercial capsule. Most results are reported by the organisations that ran the experiments, only some have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and none has yet been shown to work as a repeatable production process.

Pilot and early commercial

MicroLED displays

MicroLED displays use arrays of microscopic light-emitting diodes as pixels, so each pixel makes its own light. Laboratory results are promising, but moving millions of tiny chips onto a screen with near-zero defects is the main manufacturing barrier, and the technology has so far reached commercial use mainly in large commercial and professional screens.

Pilot and early commercial

Photonic integrated circuits

Photonic integrated circuits put lasers, waveguides, modulators and detectors on a single chip so that light, rather than only electricity, carries and processes signals. Silicon photonics has established foundry access, and Broadcom's 2025 co-packaged optics switch uses silicon photonics engines. Thin-film lithium niobate and indium phosphide serve other functions.

Lab demonstration

Topological qubits

Topological qubits aim to store quantum information in Majorana zero modes, which could make the stored information less sensitive to local noise. Microsoft's 2025 Majorana 1 announcement and parity-readout paper are contested, and the existence of a working topological qubit is not yet established.