Tantalum is a hard and highly conductive metal with ductility and acid resistance. Its density is 16. 65g/cm3. Tantalum has a high tipping point temperature of 3020°C. Tantalum is often used as an alloy additive and is often combined with nickel to enhance the corrosion resistance of nickel. When mixed with metals such as Ni, tantalum has excellent resistance to a wide range of corrosive environments, including inorganic acids, most organic acids, liquid metals, and most salts. Tantalum is used in the aerospace, chemical processing, medical, superconducting and electronics markets.
Tantalum alloys are fabricated by means of a bonding reaction to reduce tantalum pentooxide powder to tantalum metal. In an unrestricted implementation, a tantalum alloy is fabricated by means of a thermal setting reaction using a mixture of reactants comprising: tantalum pentooxide powder; At least one of the iron oxide (III) powder and copper oxide (II) powder; Peroxide collar powder; Associative metal powder; W and at least one of pentoxinol powder, crane metal powder and = crane oxide powder.
In another non-restrictive embodiment, a tantalum alloy is fabricated by placing a mixture of reactants in a reflexion vessel. The reactant mixture comprises: tantalum pentoxide powder; At least one of iron oxide powder and copper oxide powder; Tantalum peroxide powder; Associative metal powder; W and niobium pentoxide powder. The reactant mixture is placed on top of the oxidizer powder layer in a graphite reaction vessel. The tantalum or tantalum alloy ignition wire is placed in contact with the reactant mixture. Seal the reaction vessel in the reaction chamber. A vacuum is established inside the reaction chamber. The ignition line is energized W to initiate a thermal bonding reaction between the components of the reactant mixture. The associative reaction produces a reaction product, which consists of a completely combined monolithic alloy slag and a separate cautery phase. Alloy contains tantalum and crane. The slag phase consists of an oxide pair and an oxide collar. The reaction product is cooled to ambient temperature. Remove the product from the reaction vessel. Separate slag and metal slag.
Downstream electron beam cauterization of pressed sintered powders containing tantalum and other alloying elements may present other problems. On a macro scale, tantalum powders and other alloying elements powders are uniformly mixed prior to pressing and sintering. However, the resulting compaction does not contain a homogeneous solid solution which contains alloying elements completely dissolved in the tantalum matrix. Conversely, the pressing block contains discrete and discrete regions or inclusions of alloying elements (such as tantalum) distributed in a relatively continuous region or phase of the tantalum metal. The discrete alloying element region and tantalum region of the multiphase microstructure of transport correspond to the corresponding powder particles that are fused together by metallurgy to form compacts by W.
