Tantalum is the third most refractory metal, melting point 2980℃, only after tungsten and rhenium. In addition, tantalum also has the advantages of low vapor pressure, good cold processing, high chemical stability, strong resistance to liquid metal corrosion, and high dielectric constant of the surface oxide film. Therefore, it has been widely used in industry and our daily life. In this article, we take a look at what tantalum and tantalum alloys are used for.
50-70% of the world's tantalum in the form of capacitor grade tantalum powder and tantalum wire is used to manufacture tantalum capacitors. Because the tantalum surface can form a compact and stable oxide film, high dielectric strength, it is easy to accurately and conveniently control the anodizing process of the capacitor. At the same time, tantalum powder sintered block can obtain a large surface area in a small volume, so tantalum capacitors have the advantages of high capacitance, low leakage current, low equivalent series resistance, long service life and excellent comprehensive performance.
Tantalum capacitors are widely used in communication (switches, mobile phones, pagers, fax machines, etc.), computers, automobiles, home and office appliances, instrumentation, aerospace, national defense, and military industry and other industrial and scientific sectors. In the chemical industry, tantalum can be used instead of stainless steel in the equipment for making various inorganic acids, and the life of the equipment can be increased by dozens of times than before. Use of stainless steel. Tantalum oxide is used in the manufacture of advanced optical glasses and catalysts.
In the cemented carbide field, tantalum carbide can be used to manufacture cemented carbide. Adding a certain amount of tantalum carbide to tungsten carbide containing titanium carbide can not only improve the room temperature strength of tungsten carbide, but more importantly, improve the bending strength of tungsten carbide at 1200 °C.
In addition, tungsten carbide containing tantalum carbide has good weldability and is not easy to crack during grinding, which improves the performance of tungsten carbide. The carbide blade used for milling should contain more tantalum carbide, so that the tip strength is high, and the impact and temperature changes during intermittent cutting have better adaptability.
