Recent interest in tantalum is due to increases in spot prices for tantalum raw materials which during 2000 reached US$145 to 175/lb of contained Ta2O5 (Platt’s Metals Week) and as much as US$ 350 /lb which was the bid rate for the Oct 2000 Davis Langdon Australia (DLA) Tender. As a result, exploration companies targeted a variety of pegmatites, specialty granites, alkaline complexes and carbon...

We report a simple method to fabricate nano-porous tantalum oxide films via anodization with Ta foils as the anode at room temperature. A mixture of ethylene glycol, phosphoric acid, NH4F and H2O was used as the electrolyte where the nano-porous tantalum oxide could be synthesized by anodizing a tantalum foil for 1 h at 20 V in a two-electrode configuration. The as-prepared porous film exhibite...

The use of liquid-liquid extraction for the separation of tantalum from niobium was demonstrated. Tantalum and niobium spectrographically free of each other were prepared in quantity on a continuous basis.

The structure and microhardness of Cu-Ta joints produced by explosive welding were studied. It was found that, during explosive welding, an intermediate layer 20⋯40  μ m thick with a finely dispersed heterophase structure, formed between the welded copper and tantalum plates. The structure of the layer was studied by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Microvolumes with tantalum part...

The hydrogen permeability of bulk tantalum and tantalum coated with thin films of palladium was measured at temperatures from 623 to 1173 K and hydrogen partial pressures from 0.1 to 2.6 MPa in a flowing gas system. Palladium coatings were deposited by both electroless plating (1–2 m thick Pd layer) and cold plasma-discharge sputtering with two different thicknesses, 0.04 or 1.2 m. All samples ...

Solid-electrolyte tantalum capacitors were first developed and commercially produced in the 1950s. They represented a quantum leap forward in miniaturization and reliability over existing wound-foil wet electrolytic capacitors. While the solid tantalum capacitor has dramatically improved electrical performance versus wet-electrolyte capacitors, especially at low temperatures, today’s electronic...

Tantalum oxide memristors can switch continuously from a low-conductance semiconducting to a high-conductance metallic state. At the boundary between these two regimes are quantized conductance states, which indicate the formation of a point contact within the oxide characterized by multistable conductance fluctuations and enlarged electronic noise. Here, we observe diverse conductance-dependen...

In this work we synthesized well-ordered, Ta2O5 films with a 3D-interconnected gyroid mesopore architecture with large pore sizes beyond 30 nm and extended crystalline domains through self-assembly of tailor-made triblock-terpolymers. This has effectively eliminated diffusion limitations inherent to previously reported mesoporous photocatalysts and resulted in superior hydrogen evolution with a...

Porous tantalum is a biomaterial that was recently introduced in orthopaedics in order to overcome problems of the past related to implant loosening. Its use has led to very good results, especially in difficult cases where severe bone defect is present, as it is found to have osteoconductive and possibly, osteoinductive properties. So, it is of great interest to shed light to the mechanisms th...