This person is dropped on a fantasy feudal world and is basically playing factorio with nanobots, but the challenge is that they don't have resources with which to build everything, hence negotiation with fantasy locals. While the MC is capable of using their nanobots to slowly create things such as carbon nanotubes and create mechanically simple chemical refinement, they need a spread of elements across the periodic table to be able to create things such as sensors, computers, special-purpose tools, lasers and so on.
I'm aware of groups such as 'heavy metals', 'light metals', noble gases and so on, but are those useful definitions? Can I break down the periodic table into general groups of elements good for certain machines? If so, what are those groups?
TL;DR: My question is what the groups of the periodic table are called, and if they are useful descriptions for getting 'groups' of resources with which known technologies are built off.
final edit: thanks very much for the answers, I think I wanted a way to group togther certain elements so I'd have a system for saying 'the dwarves have a few lanthanides to sell, while the elves deal in numerous light metals' since I don't know where in our modern world we get elements such as boron, tungsten, beryllium, and other obscure elements.