AVAILABLE IN MANY FORMS
Future Alloys can provide the Highest Quality Pure Tantalum materials in many forms including:
Tantalum Block, Rod, Bar, Strip, Sheet, Plate, Wire, Cube, Crucibles and Ingots.
We can supply be-spoke sizes and our sales team have many years of experience and can offer you technical information and advice for all the materials we deal with.
CUSTOM MACHINING
Do you have a special application for tantalum that needs custom machining?
Special cutters, feeds and cutting fluids are essential to complete tantalum machining without a detrimental effect to the material.
Future alloys have all the experience and equipment necessary to precision machine tantalum and tantalum Alloys to the highest specifications.
Please be as specific as possible, for example:
“Please quote for 8 off, 30mm diameter pure unalloyed tantalum rods, in 1m lengths”
Tantalum has high melting and boiling points and excellent corrosion resistance, and is non toxic to the human body. It has the highest capacitance per volume of any substance. It is very malleable and ductile, with high formability and weldability.
Name: Tantalum / UNS R05200 (Unalloyed)
Symbol: Ta
Type: Refractory Metal
Atomic number: 73
Atomic mass: 180.95 g
CAS No: 7440-25-7
Melting point: 3017°C, 5463°F, 3290 K
Boiling point: 5455°C, 9851°F, 5728 K
Hardness: 6.5 Mohs,
Density: 16.69 g /cm3
Thermal Expansion: 6.30 µm/(m·K)
Thermal conductivity: 57.50 W/m·K
Electrical resistivity: (20 °C) 131 nΩ·m
Number of Neutrons: 108
Classification: Transition metal
Crystal structure: Body Centered Cubic (BCC)
Tantalum or sometimes known as UNS R05200 is a versatile transition metal. In its pure form it’s a grey-blue shiny, soft material that when polished its color changes to bright silver. It has high melting and boiling points and excellent corrosion resistance. It also is highly ductile, with high formability and weldability.
About 50% of the tantalum consumed each year is used within the electronics industry, mainly as powder and wire for capacitors. It has a fine microstructure which makes it ideal for drawing precision thin wires which require a flawless pure surface, as required in applications such as electronic capacitors.
Tantalum is one of the most inert metals known, it is resistant to most acids and corrosion and non toxic to the human body. Consequently it is used extensively in the chemical industry for processing equipment, and in the medical industry for joint replacements and medical implants.
Almost all household items and electronic devices contain Tantalum since it is used to produce high-performance capacitors, the components used in everyday electronic devices. The metal has significantly helped shrink the physical size of mobile phones, watches, laptops, cameras, DVD players and other electronic devices due to Tantalum’s ability to possess a very high capacitance in a relatively small space. In the 21st century when data storage and telecommunication are two of the fastest growing industries, miniaturization isn’t only a requirement, it’s inevitable and tantalum is one of the best solutions for space-sensitive devices.
Tantalum is a crucial component in the production of state-of-the art semiconductors. Using a process called physical vapor deposition (PVD), tantalum is “sputtered” onto semiconductor substrates to create a thin film diffusion barrier to protect the copper interconnects. Tantalum sputtering targets are used for several other products, including inkjet printers, magnetic storage media, and flat panel display screens.
In the electrical industry it’s mainly used in a powder or wire form. In the early years after its discovery it was used in light bulbs where the filaments were made of metallic tantalum but was later replaced with tungsten.
It’s also widely used in ultra high frequency electron tubes because combined with oxygen and nitrogen tantalum forms oxides and nitrides which help to maintain the proper vacuum for the tubes of radio transmitters. This is also true for vacuum furnaces, thermowells and fasteners. The oxides also help the manufacturing of refractive index glasses for camera lenses.
The chemical and pharmaceutical industries benefit from Tantalum’s corrosion resistance as it makes it ideal to manufacture liners in vessels, pipework, valves, heat exchangers, reactors and pressure vessels use for chemical processing.
It’s inert to most acids, there are a few exceptions such as sulfuric acid (H2SO4), hydrofluoric acid ( HF) and hot alkaline solutions but it’s still a great choice for containers used for laboratory experiments because of its chemical inertness.
Other than the smaller size, these devices have a significantly low failure rate which makes them able to be successfully used in the medical industry. Hearing aids, pacemakers, defibrillators, neuromodulation devices and other critical equipment have to be ultra reliable and this is supported by the use of Tantalum components in circuitry.
Tantalum is 100% biocompatible, that is is not toxic to the human body and body fluids don’t affect its chemical properties, it’s completely “bio-inert”, and therefore can be safely implanted into the human body in the form of surgical implants such as hip and knee joints, stents, pacemakers, bone fracture repair plates, screws and other medical components. Some applications only have a tantalum coating, the base material being another metal. Tantalum is also non-magnetic and non-ferrous which means it’s also safe to undergo MRI procedures for patients who have implants.
Tantalum-based porous materials can be used for dental purposes as well and their importance in the field is very likely to increase in the coming years. Nowadays most of the high-quality implants are still made of titanium but there has been so many extensive researches and development commitments in the industry that the biggest implant manufacturers realised that new materials including tantalum will take the outdated technology’s place eventually. Titanium is less strong and flexible than tantalum and the new dental implants are 2-3 times more successful as they emulate the human bone.
High Temperature Applications for Tantalum include construction of vacuum furnaces, containers for liquid metals and vapours, thermocouple sheaths, boats and coils for product coating high temperature metals, resistance heaters, trays, thermowells, heat shields, glass production and protective coatings, crucibles manufacturing synthetic crystals such as diamonds and sapphires, crucibles for high temperature reactions.
The Bank of Kazakhstan uses the element for bimetallic coins where the center is tantalum and the ring is silver.
Tantalum alloys are utilised in laboratory equipment, weights for precise scales and balances, ball point pens, and tools that have to work at high temperatures and speeds.
Tantalums high melting point makes it suitable to be added to superalloys that are used for turbine blades of aircrafts, nuclear reactors, missile parts and gas turbines.
Tantalum’s high workability and weldability make it an ideal material for the construction of corrosion resistant Shell and Tube Heat Exchangers.