Dilithium can't be replicated either, although it can be 'recrystallised' by the 24th century.
You're right, how can I have forgotten about that one.
In regards to what can be replicated or not... the area is somewhat murky, but technically speaking there shouldn't be any real limits to what you can replicate.
From what I can tell, certain objects aren't replicatable, otherwise it would be very common and not considered special.
If Neutronium was "Replicatable", everybody would have it and current Phasers/Disruptors would be obsolete. But they aren't, for obvious reasons.
The fact that most objects are replicatable is "Good Enough" for a very comfortable society for everybody to live in.
We have no direct canonical evidence which says you can't replicate Latinum.
Like anything else, it has a molecular structure that can be identified and processed (otherwise how else would you have enough of it for various species to use it as physical currency?).
I doubt latinum naturally occurs as bars.
Latinum seems to naturally occur as a silvery liquid metal.
But the point of using Gold bars or Parallelpipeds are to contain said liquid since Jadzia mentioned that people were sick & tired of doing basic financial transactions with liquid droppers. It's just too inconvenient.
While its possible that there is enough latinum out there to make everyone rich, its also quite likely that extraction and modification are tightly regulated by various organisations/species.
It wouldn't make sense if it was just something you can mine, it would need to be highly regulated by government to use as a form of currency to have real value.
We know the Ferengi use Latinum as physical currency, along with some other societies which still have a monetary based economy (unlike the Federation).
UFP still has the Federation Credits when dealing with other entities, and we don't know much about how they work on the inside since no normal portrayals of daily life is shown in most shows.
The UFP might also use it when engaging in active commerce with other species, but mostly for the sake of establishing and maintaining good relations with those species that use monetary based economies - otherwise, I cannot really think that the UFP would 'need' a resource that cannot be found in UFP space or a synthetic substitute couldn't be devised (but Trek writers do have a tendency to ignore this readily so they will probably write in limitations for the sake of having limitations).
I'm sure that the UFP, like most governments, holds currency of multiple nations just incase they need to do business with them.
At any rate, as long as you can scan/analyse something to a sufficient degree (and we have evidence that UFP sensors do scan down to the subatomic), there should be no limit to what you could replicate.
The main limiting factor will in effect be energy required for replication since most UFP replicators use energy to matter conversion (but are capable and frequently use matter to energy then back to batter conversion process).
For Transporters it's more of a Matter to Energy Phasing and not strict pure energy conversion since it's too energy intensive. Same with replicators, they use stock material and assemble it, not pure energy conversion. That's too energy wasteful and intensive compared to assembling from pre-existing raw material stocks. Go read the TNG Technical Manual if you want to see how replicators were designed.
In regards to replicating actual live cells... yes, that was a limitation established for the fully automated replication facility in ST: ENT... but that was also in the mid 22nd century.
There is no in-universe limit which says you cannot replicate fully live cells.
Yet we don't see it happen on the regular, that should be evidence enough, otherwise they would replicate any missing living cells they needed.
The replicator pattern buffers could have easily been programmed to store live cells (which could be put there by people) in energy form. Maintaining cohesion on simple cells in the pattern buffer should be infinitely easier and virtually non-taxing on the buffers.
Plus, if they can replicate eyes and organs to replace them (which is doable), then I don't see an issue.
They have
Genitronic Replicators, but those are just advanced forms of growing Living Cells and organs in a quick fashion. It's not the super speedy Replicators for in-animate objects that we know & love that can spit out whatever you want in a split second. It takes hours or days to grow the Living Organ necessary. But that's still incredibly good compared to anything we have now.
According to Memory Beta, the Vidiians have more advanced
Genetronic Replicators, that's why they were able to split
B'Elanna Torres into her Human & Klingon halves. That in itself is a amazing feet of technology.
A bio printer today can print organs using stem-cells, etc.
And while yes, those are taken from actual live people in the first place... a cell isn't that complex. Plus, it needs chemical energy to be live and do its job (which is what mitochondria do).
Just infuse it with the necessary amount of said chemical energy that's native to that cell during the replication process and that should solve the problem.
That should be fine, but that should take hours or days to complete, not a split second.
Or, just store a copious amount of stem-cells into a pattern buffer, and if you need more, just have them proliferate in necessary amounts by adding some needed matter/medium for the process to occur and then re-store it back into the pattern buffer.
I don't think that's how pattern buffers work.
Also, the premise that nothing has improved since the 24th century in terms of replication ability, etc... is utterly moronic/ridiculous.
But there should be proper limits.
In regards to anti-matter being non-replicable... eh I take issues with that.
If processes exist to create anti-matter via synthetic means on a large scale to be used as a power source on starships, then like any other manufacturing method, this should be possible to make replicable.
Why would you say that? Otherwise power generation would become trivial, and we know it's not IRL or in the creation of IRL Anti-Matter. It takes ALOT of energy to make just a tiny amount of Anti-Matter. Just because the 24th century can mass produce Anti-Matter to power many fleets of StarShip to the point where it's like modern day Petroleum, doesn't mean it's a cheap process that it can be considered trivial that you would be able to replicate it at the press of a button.
Torpedoes and warp cores were safely transported from one location to the next after all.
Obviously, there wouldn't be a point on replicating it if you wanted to generate anti-matter from energy alone on a starship (using the Warp core because it would just take same amount of anti-matter in that case with some possible inefficiencies in place of a few % that may increase energy consumption in that case resulting in a net loss of anti-matter produced)... but, in that case (and for creation of similar highly energetic substances), you could technically use matter to energy (to reform it into desirable structure in the matter stream) and back to matter or anti-matter conversion process instead just for the sake of speeding up production if anything else).
Moving something from point A to B is different for manufacturing it.
There's a reason that you don't use pure Energy to Matter and Matter to Energy, it's VERY energy intensive compared to assembling an object from bare raw materials via the current replicator methods. I don't understand your obsession with using more wasteful methods of Replication. It's stated in the TNG technical manual that they don't use that method, not because they can't, but because it's energy intensive and inefficient use of existing energy.
Anti-matter is after all comprised of same elements that comprise regular matter, its just that the electric charge and magnetic moment are opposite in sign - and since anti-matter can be safely contained in a forcefield, I mean creating such a 'protective environment' as you generate anti-matter should be doable.
It also needs to sit in a force field and not interact with regular matter.
Ergo it's not practical for much use other than M/A-M reaction.
If you can transport it (which it was demonstrated they can), then it can be replicated (the only difference is you won't be able to use anti-matter to replicate anti-matter because you'd likely end up with a net loss of anti-matter produced [or exactly the same amount of it]... for that (direct energy to matter, or anti-matter conversion process), you'd probably need an energy source that surpasses anti-matter such as for example Omega Molecule, Thermionic generators, or Tetryon reactors (or just use the massive energy output of a Sun in a star system where you have a replication system which can store a lot of that solar energy and replicate massive amounts of anti-matter).
You'd most likely need the output of your local Star to help mass produce Anti-Matter in significant quantities cheaply. You'd probably have tons of Anti-Deuterium manufacturing Orbital facilities in every StarSystem, all churning out Anti-Deuterium to fuel StarShips.
We know Omega Molecules are banned from R&D due to the worst case scenario if you screw up.
That's out of the question.
I doubt Species 8472 would just hand out their Thermionic Generator technology to outsiders.
Tetryon Reactors are definitely one of the newer forms of Power Plants that should be R&Ded ASAP once Voyager returned home.
