Porous Tantalum in Orthopedics

The preparation of biocompatible bony scaffolds has been one of the hot topics of research in the medical field. According to EvaluateMedTech, orthopedic-related medical devices had global sales of $36.5 billion in 2017 and will reach $47.1 billion in 2024, representing a compound annual growth rate of 3.7%.

porous tantalum

Current orthopedic metal implant materials

The choice of medical human bone implant materials, the earlier application of materials are stainless steel, nickel-chromium alloy, nickel-titanium alloy, the last 2 or 3 years the trend is TC4 titanium alloy, these materials contain nickel, chromium, or aluminum, vanadium and other harmful elements, and due to its elastic modulus exceeds the human bone too much, the material and the human body affinity is low, prone to “bone non-stick “phenomenon. Medical experts and the market are in urgent need of new non-toxic and non-hazardous new materials with good affinity to the human body to improve the current situation.

Multiple implant sizes, different clinical application scenarios

Porous tantalum has many advantages such as:

(1) Perfect integration with the host bone interface: compared to the most commonly used titanium, tantalum metal is more biocompatible and has a better osseointegration capability.

(2) Unique bionic trabecular structure: Tantalum’s elastic modulus is closer to that of bone tissue, which makes it more suitable for bionic trabecular structure in the human body than other metals.

(3) Inducing rapid bone and vascular growth into it can promote rapid growth of bone tissue and vascular tissue into the pores of porous tantalum, and its highly porous and supportive structure provides extensive space for bone growth, forming a good biological fixation, which can effectively solve the exothermic effect of bone cement and its effect on surrounding tissues, which is great clinical progress.

The above advantages make it show great clinical application value and applicability in different sizes of orthopedic implants, and different parts of bone defects.

porous tantalum application

1) Application of porous tantalum in orthopedics

In clinical applications, porous tantalum printing can be applied to all small and medium-sized restorative products. For large-sized repair products, considering the high density of pure tantalum and the excessive weight of the printed implant prosthesis, multi-component gradient printing can be adopted, with porous tantalum used in the bone growing-in area and other metals such as titanium alloy, which is cheaper and lighter in quality, being used in other areas.

With the continuous research on tantalum materials in recent years, several clinical trials have proven that new implants made of medical tantalum in combination with titanium and other metals can compensate for the shortcomings of other metal materials in terms of biocompatibility, bioactivity, and implant-bone bonding.

2) Tantalum coating – a new direction for orthopaedic applications

Tantalum metal has excellent corrosion resistance, and its coating on the surface of certain medical metal materials can effectively prevent the release of toxic elements and improve the biocompatibility of metal materials. Tantalum coatings can meet the three elements of the ideal bone graft material, namely osteoconduction, and osteogenesis, resulting in wider clinical applications and more flexible patient choices.

In addition, tantalum has also been used as an implant material in the restorative treatment of patients with missing teeth. Experiments have shown that conventional implants can absorb up to 30% of the loading energy during the loading process, while tantalum trabecular implants can absorb 50%-75%, which allows the implant to disperse the loading force to the surrounding bone during the long-term intraoral functional loading, avoiding stress concentration, while the higher friction coefficient provides good initial stability during implant placement, thus improving the dental implant bonding rate, especially in implant patients with poor bone quality.

Conclusion

Although porous tantalum is an ideal material for orthopaedic implants. However, due to the variability of the human body and the random morphology of bone defect sites, such as patients with bone tumors and patients with bone deformities, standardized porous tantalum can no longer meet the requirements of individual patient treatment. From the perspective of the development trend of clinical medicine, the best treatment method should be personalized treatment and the best implant should be a personalized implant.

How is Tantalum used in Modern Stomatology?

Tantalum metal (Ta) has excellent corrosion resistance, high melting point, high strength, and abrasion resistance, which has been widely used in aircraft, rockets, and other heat-resistant materials as well as industrial fields requiring high-strength parts. In addition, tantalum metal has good physical and mechanical properties and good biological compatibility, which makes it a new kind of biological material after titanium metal.

oral implant implantation

Nowadays, tantalum metal has been widely used in oral implant implantation, femoral head necrosis treatment, coronary artery stent implantation, acetabular prosthesis implantation, surgical suture line production, and other medical fields. The application of medical tantalum and porous tank in stomatology is introduced below.

Oral Implant Implantation
Oral Implant Implantation

Tantalum has been used as an implant material in the repair and treatment of patients with missing teeth. With the development of science and technology, porous tantalum has also been tried to be used in the field of implants. Due to its outstanding mechanical properties, biological properties, elastic modulus equivalent to bone tissue, and high friction coefficient, it can provide good bone bonding and initial stability for the implant, which is called a bone trabecular implant. In addition, its elastic modulus (between the cancellous bone and dense bone) is the same as that of bone tissue, which enables the implant to disperse the dental forces into the surrounding bone during long-term oral functional load, thus avoiding stress concentration.

Experiments have shown that traditional implants can absorb 30% of the load energy, while porous tantalum implants can absorb 50% to 75%. The high friction coefficient makes tantalum have good initial stability in the process of implant implantation, so as to improve the bonding rate of implant teeth, especially for the implant patients with poor bone quality. The three-dimensional structure of porous tantalum has pores, which are conducive to the attachment of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and osteoblasts on its surface, and the pore structure is similar to bone tissue, which provides a good scaffold for the growth of bone tissue.

Microstructure of the porous tantalum material
The microstructure of the porous tantalum material

Relevant studies have confirmed that porous tantalum granules have a good ability to induce osteogenesis, and its effect on repairing jaw defects is better than that of bio-oss bone powder commonly used in clinical practice. The porous tantalum granules and bio-oss bone powder were implanted into the defect area of the right and left mandible of beagle dogs respectively. Three months later, gross specimens, X-ray images, and hard tissue sections showed that porous tantalum granule group had a higher bone formation amount and bone tissue maturity than the control group.

Due to their good biocompatibility, tantalum and porous tantalum have important clinical value and application prospects in many fields of medicine, such as stomatology, bone surgery, cardiovascular surgery, and biomedical engineering. The application of surface modification technology will enable tantalum metal and porous tantalum to have more excellent biological properties, thus greatly improving the ability of tantalum and porous tantalum implants to combine with the surrounding bone interface.

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Why is Tantalum Widely Used in Electronic Industry?

Since the 1950s, TZM alloy (Mo-0.5 Ti-0.1 Zr-0.02 C) has been developed to meet the needs of the nuclear power system, aviation, and aerospace industry. It is the most widely used molybdenum alloy in the industry and the earliest refractory alloy used as a high-temperature structural material. However, the low-temperature brittleness of molybdenum alloy greatly limits its application.

tantalum metal

Tantalum metal has a lower plastic brittle transition temperature (196 ℃) and has better performance on the workability, weldability, ductility, and oxidation resistance at room temperature than that of molybdenum and tungsten in refractory metals. In addition, tantalum and its alloys with high melting point (2996 ℃), corrosion resistance, excellent high-temperature strength, and free of radioactive, etc, are widely used in the electronics industry, chemical industry, aerospace, weapon system, and the medical field, etc.

Tantalum metal
Tantalum metal

The applications of tantalum materials in the electronics industry mainly include tantalum capacitors, integrated circuits, electron tubes, memory devices, and passive devices.

Tantalum capacitor

Tantalum has the metal property of a valve, and the compact oxide film formed on its surface has unidirectional conductivity, which is suitable for making capacitors. Tantalum capacitors have a large capacity and small volume, and their capacitance is three times that of aluminum capacitors, but their volume is much smaller than that of aluminum capacitors. The working temperature of the tantalum capacitor ranges from -80 to 200 ℃, which can meet the demand of different temperatures. Besides, tantalum capacitors have strong stability and heat resistance performance and become a kind of material with high reliability in the electronics industry, which is widely used in military and high-tech fields that need to ensure high reliability.

Tantalum capacitor
Tantalum capacitor

Integrated circuit

Tantalum material is introduced into the semiconductor industry as a barrier layer thin-film material used to prevent the diffusion of copper atoms to silicon wafers. There are no compounds are formed between copper and tantalum, and copper and nitride, so tantalum and tantalum base membranes are used as barrier layers to prevent copper diffusion, and the typical thickness of the barrier layer is 0.005 ~ 0.01μm. In order to prevent the diffusion of copper atoms into the silicon matrix, tantalum nitride, tantalum silicide, tantalum carbide, and silicon nitride are used as barrier layers.

Memory device

Tantalum oxide matrix resistive memory (RRAM) has the advantages of simple structure, fast read and write speed, strong instability, and compatibility with the CMOS process. The permittivity of tantalum oxide material is very high, which is about 25. Moreover, there are only two stable phases between ta-O, Ta2O5 and TaO2, which have high oxygen capacity ratio under the high temperature of 1000 ℃.

Passive device

When tantalum nitride film is exposed to air, the surface will naturally form a layer of the oxide layer to protect the film from erosion in the presence of water vapor and voltage. The chip resistance of tantalum nitride will not cause catastrophic failure of the device due to the poor integrity of the package or protective coating.

RRAM
RRAM

When researchers discovered tantalum’s high-temperature resistance, good ductility, and corrosion resistance, the research on tantalum metal began. At present, the application field of capacitor grade tantalum wire is further expanded with the rapid development of the electronic market. However, the development of tantalum capacitors is greatly restricted due to various reasons, such as the increase in production cost, the further consumption of resources, and the intensification of the competition between ceramic and other capacitors.

In recent years, the market consumption of capacitor tantalum wire has been maintained at about 160 tons per year. With the development and use of military capacitors and the miniaturization and chip type of capacitors, the capacitor-grade tantalum wire gradually develops toward the thick and thin poles.

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What are the Medical Applications of Tantalum?

Metal materials have excellent comprehensive mechanical properties and anti-fatigue properties and are especially suitable for bone replacement implantation of human-bearing parts. Therefore, many kinds of metal materials such as stainless steel, titanium alloy, and cobalt-base alloy have been widely used in the clinic as biomedical materials and have achieved a good therapeutic effect.

tantalum stents

However, the complex human body environment will lead to corrosion of materials and the release of toxic elements, which will lead to the reduced biocompatibility of metal materials. In addition, the elastic modulus of the metal material is too different from human bone tissue, and it is easy to produce a stress shielding effect, which is not conducive to the growth and remodeling of new bone and even leads to secondary fracture.

At present, tantalum metal attracts the attention of medical workers and materials researchers with its unique advantages and is widely used in the following aspects.

biomedical materials
Biomedical materials

Tantalum wire

Tantalum is so malleable that it can be made into even finer strands of hair. As a surgical suture, tantalum wire has the advantages of simple sterilization, less stimulation, and high tensile strength, but it also has the disadvantages of not easy knotting. Tantalum wire can be used to suture bone, tendon, and fascia, as well as reduce suture or internal dental fixation. It can also be used as a suture line for internal surgery or embedded in artificial eyeballs. Moreover, tantalum wire can even replace tendons and nerve fibers.

Tantalum sheet

Tantalum metal can be made into tantalum sheets of various shapes and sizes and implanted according to the needs of various parts of the human body, such as repairing and sealing the cracks and defects of broken skull bones and limbs fractures. An artificial ear made from tantalum sheets is attached to the head before the skin is transplanted. After a while, the new skin grew so well that it was barely visible as an artificial tantalum ear.

Tantalum stents

Tantalum wire can be used to weave the reticulocytes stent. Tantalum stent can be clearly seen under X-ray, which is very convenient for monitoring and follow-up, and there is no fracture and corrosion in the body for a long time. Tantalum has good flexibility, so the stents can better adapt to the normal pulse of arteries and can be released quickly and accurately.

Tantalum stents

Porous tantalum rod

Porous tantalum rod is a kind of honeycomb three-dimensional rod-shaped structure with characteristics of the human cancellous bone structure, with an average porosity of 430~m and a porosity of 75 ~ 80. The elastic modulus of the porous tantalum rod is about 3GPa, which is between the cancellous bone (about 1GPa) and cortical bone (about 15GPa), far lower than the commonly used titanium alloy implanted human material (about 11OGPa), thus avoiding the stress shielding effect.

Porous tantalum rod implantation is mainly used for the treatment of avascular necrosis of the femoral head in the early and middle stages. Femoral head necrosis is a kind of functional disease caused by the destruction of the blood circulation of the femoral head. It may affect the function at any age, but it usually occurs in young people. For the treatment of early femoral head necrosis, the main methods include reducing the internal pressure of the femoral head, increasing the blood supply of the femoral head, and preventing or slowing the deformation of the femoral head. The porous tantalum rod has a good supporting effect on the necrotic area of the femoral head, avoids the collapse of the femoral head, and has the potential for revascularization in the necrotic area of the femoral head.

Porous tantalum artificial joint

As an artificial joint material, the porous tantalum also has obvious advantages. The porous tantalum has a certain elasticity. When it interacts with the cortical bone with a relatively large elastic modulus, it will produce slight deformation in a certain range without fracture. This property allows the porous tantalum acetabular cover to better match the bone acetabular, improving the initial stability of the implant and reducing the possibility of acetabular fractures.

The results of the clinical experiment of total knee replacement with porous tantalum showed that the structure of porous tantalum provided sufficient support, and the patient’s bone healed well. In addition, the reduction of bone mineral salt density in patients using tantalum total knee replacement is smaller than that in patients using the cobalt-chromium alloy, but the long-term clinical effect remains to be further studied. Due to the inertia of tantalum itself and the appropriate mechanical properties and good biocompatibility of porous tantalum with the human body, porous tantalum will play a greater role in the field of artificial joints.

Porous tantalum artificial joint
Porous tantalum artificial joint

Porous tantalum filler material

Porous tantalum can also be used as filling material for all parts of the human body, such as tissue reconstruction after tumor resection, dissolving filling of the neck and lumbar spine, and vertebral arch replacement. Because of the nearly perfect fusion of porous tantalum in mechanical properties, tissue growth, and processing properties, it provides a wide design space for the molding of porous tantalum.

Tantalum coating

Tantalum metal has been used for its excellent corrosion resistance, and it is coated on the surface of some medical metal materials to prevent the release of toxic elements and improve the biocompatibility of the metal materials, as well as the visibility of materials in the human body. In addition to metallic materials, tantalum can be coated on non-metallic materials such as carbon cage surface tantalum for spinal fusion, the tantalum coating increases the strength and toughness of the carbon cage to fit the spine and better meet the requirements of the surgical process. Tantalum can also be coated on the surface of materials with some polymer composites to improve the visibility and biocompatibility of materials.

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Why Can the Tantalum Metal be used in Medical Operations?

Since the discovery of tantalum in 1802, the understanding and development of tantalum have had a long history. Tantalum metal is characterized by corrosion resistance, hard quality, high melting point, good thermal conductivity, good affinity with the human body, and easy processing, which is widely used in the fields of metallurgy, chemical industry, atomic energy, aerospace, electronics, and medical devices.

tantalum

Biocompatibility test of tantalum metal

Biocompatibility refers to the concept of various biological, physical, and chemical reactions resulting from interactions between materials and organisms. Generally speaking, it is the degree of compatibility between the material and the human body after implantation, that is, whether it will cause a toxic effect on human tissue.

The principle of biosafety is to eliminate the destructive effect of biological materials on human organs, such as cytotoxicity and carcinogenicity. If biomaterials are to be successful, they must at least be accepted by the host without harmful effects. Therefore, biological safety evaluation, that is, biological evaluation, should be carried out on biological materials.

porous tantalum

Insoluble tantalum salt is not absorbed by the human body through oral or local injection, and the absorption amount of soluble tantalum salt in the gastrointestinal tract is very small. Once tantalum enters the body, the main carrier responsible for the removal of tantalum is phagocytes. In the body, phagocytes can survive and have no cellular degeneration after 1h exposure to tantalum dust, with only a significant increase in glucose oxidation. Under the same conditions, silica dust can cause severe cytoplasmic degeneration and death of phagocytes, indicating that tantalum is non-cytotoxic.

Through abundant domestic and foreign materials, it is found that porous tantalum has the following advantages compared with titanium alloy.

The advantages of porous tantalum nails are one with the advantages of metal materials. After implantation, as the bone tissue grows, the fixation strength of porous tantalum nail will gradually increase. Meanwhile, as the bone tissue grows, blood circulation is also introduced into the nail body, which is conducive to preventing the occurrence of fracture nonunion and femoral head necrosis. The porous tantalum nail has excellent biocompatibility with bone. It does not need to be taken out after implantation, which can effectively prevent the risk of fracture after the removal of internal fixation. Therefore, porous tantalum nail has a good long-term effect in the treatment of femoral neck fracture and has a broad application prospect in other disciplines of orthopedics and medicine.

Application case of tantalum nail

Porous tantalum nail implantation is an ideal minimally invasive surgical treatment for the treatment of early Avascular Necrosis of Femur Head (ANFH) in adults. It has unique physical and biological advantages and is expected to achieve therapeutic effects that traditional therapies do not, as well as in line with the current concept of minimally invasive. For osteonecrosis in stage Ⅰ and Ⅱ young patients, it can relieve pain and minimize complications, at least slow down or even avoid the joint replacement, but the long-term curative effect is yet to be large sample especially central level and long-term follow-up.

Stanford Advanced Materials supplies high-quality tantalum products to meet our customers’ R&D and production needs. Please visit http://www.samaterials.com for more information.

Where Can We Find Tantalum Metal?

Tantalum metal mainly exists in tantalite ore and is symbiotic with niobium. Tantalum is of moderate hardness and ductility and can be drawn into tantalum wire or tantalum foil. Tantalum has a wide range of applications due to its characteristics, and it widely exists in tantalite, tantalum alloy, tantalum powder, tantalum capacitors, etc.

tantalum alloy

Tantalum alloy is an alloy based on tantalum adding other elements. The tantalum anode oxide film is stable and corrosion-resistant. It has excellent dielectric properties and is suitable for making the electrolytic capacitor. Tantalum is highly resistant to chemical corrosion. Except for hydrogen fluoride, sulfur trioxide, hydrofluoric acid, hot concentrated sulfuric acid and alkali, tantalum can resist the corrosion of all organic and inorganic acids. Therefore, it can be used as corrosion resistant materials for chemical industry and medicine.

Tantalum alloy

As tantalum is similar to some rare elements such as uranium, thorium, rare earth, titanium, zirconium, tungsten, and common elements tin, calcium, iron, and manganese in crystalline chemistry, it is easy to have equivalence and heteromorphism.

The compact oxide film formed on the surface of metallic tantalum has the properties of valve metal of unidirectional conduction. The anodic film made of tantalum powder has chemical stability (especially in acidic electrolyte stability), high resistivity (7.5 x 1010 Ω, cm), dielectric constant (27.6) and small leakage current. Tantalum is not only the raw material for the production of pure metal tantalum but also used in the electronics industry. Lithium tantalate monocrystals and special optical glass with high refraction and low dispersion can be used as a catalyst in the chemical industry.

Tantalum oxide is a white powder insoluble in water and acids, but soluble in molten potassium bisulfate and hydrofluoric acid. The minerals containing tantalum and niobium are mainly iron tantalum and calcined greenstone. The ones containing more tantalum are called tantalite, while the ones containing more niobium are called niobite.

tantalum capacitor

The design of tantalum capacitors requires that the product performance parameters of tantalum capacitors can meet the circuit signal characteristics. However, it is often impossible to guarantee that the above two tasks are done well. Therefore, it is inevitable that failures of one kind or another will occur in the process of use. The solid tantalum capacitors were first developed in 1956 by Bell Laboratories in the United States. Tantalum capacitors can easily obtain large capacity, and there are few competitors in power filter, ac bypass, and other applications.

Stanford Advanced Materials supplies high-quality tantalum and related products to meet our customers’ R&D and production needs. Please visit http://www.samaterials.com for more information.

Applications of Tantalum Metal in Medical Field

As a kind of biomedical material, the metal material is widely used in clinical medicine because of its high suitability for mechanical properties and fatigue resistance and is suitable for the implantation of bearing parts.

However, the development of metal materials in the medical field is limited by the corrosion of materials in the human body. In recent years, tantalum metal has attracted more and more attention from medical and materials workers due to its unique advantages such as excellent corrosion resistance and biocompatibility.

tantalum

Many kinds of metal materials, such as stainless steel, titanium base, and cobalt base alloy, have been widely used in the clinic and have achieved a certain therapeutic effect. However, the complex human body environment may cause the corrosion of materials and lead to the release of toxic substances, which greatly reduces the biocompatibility of metal materials. In addition, the elastic modulus of some metal materials is too different from the human bone tissue, which is not conducive to the growth and remodeling of new bone and easy to leads to secondary fracture. These adverse conditions limit the application of metal materials as biomedical materials. Tantalum, also a metal material, is attracting more and more medical workers and materials researchers with its unique advantages.

Good corrosion resistance

At room temperature, tantalum does not react with hydrochloric acid, concentrated nitric acid, or even aqua regia, and ordinary inorganic salts cannot corrode it.

Good biocompatibility

Unlike conventional medical metal materials, biological tissue grows on tantalum after a period of implantation, just as it grows on real bones. Therefore, tantalum is also known as “Biophilic Metal”

Appropriate modulus of elasticity

The elastic modulus of tantalum with a special pore structure is between the human cancellous bone and cortical bone, which is especially suitable for bone replacement, joint replacement, and human tissue filling.

Tantalum metal is very safe, and insoluble tantalum salt is not absorbed by the human body through oral or local injection; soluble tantalum salt is also absorbed very little by the gastrointestinal tract. Once tantalum enters the body, the main carrier responsible for removing tantalum is the phagocyte. After the exposure to tantalum dust for 1 hour, all phagocytes in the body can survive and have no cellular degeneration, with the only significant increase in glucose oxidation. Under the same conditions, silica dust can cause severe cytoplasmic degeneration and death of phagocytes, indicating that tantalum is not cytotoxic.

In 1940, pure tantalum metal was first used in medical treatment, and most reports believe that tantalum as a human implant did not find any adverse reactions. The application of tantalum metal mainly focuses on the use of porous tantalum, which is a honeycomb three-dimensional structure with characteristics of the human cancellous bone structure, and the average pore size of which is 430 μm and the porosity is 75%~80%. Porous tantalum can be made into various specifications and shapes. For example, porous tantalum rods can be used for the treatment of early ischemic necrosis of the femoral head; the combination of porous tantalum and human bone is firm, so tantalum can also be used in the preparation of artificial joints; the porous tantalum can also be used as filling material for all parts of the human body, such as tissue reconstruction after tumor resection, dissolving and filling of the neck and lumbar, and vertebral arch replacement.

Stanford Advanced Materials supplies high-quality tantalum and related products to meet our customers’ R&D and production needs. Please visit http://www.samaterials.com for more information.

What are the Main Properties of Tantalum and Niobium Materials?

Rare metal material technology is one of the most important subjects in the field of material science and engineering in the new century, as well as a key material for the development of high and new technology, and tantalum and niobium play an important role in this field. The development of modern high technology such as information technology, new energy technology, space technology, biotechnology, and superconductivity is closely related to rare metal materials, especially tantalum and niobium.

superconducting devices

Main products and performance

At present, the main products used in the tantalum-niobium industry include tantalum powder, tantalum wire, tantalum carbide, tantalum, and its alloy ingots, tantalum and its alloy processing materials, tantalum target materials, tantalum oxide, lithium tantalite; niobium powder, niobium rod, niobium foil, and its alloy ingots, niobium and its alloy additives, niobium oxide, niobium tube, lithium niobate, niobium, and its alloy superconducting materials, etc.

tantalum capacitors

Tantalum powder and tantalum wire are the key materials for making tantalum capacitors, which are widely used in mobile phones, computers, digital products, automobiles, aerospace electronics, and other fields. About 60 percent of the world’s tantalum is used to make tantalum capacitors.

Tantalum and niobium target materials are used in semiconductor devices and liquid crystal display technologies, and niobium oxide, niobium powder, and niobium wire are used in making ceramic and niobium capacitors. About 90% of the world’s niobium is used in the steel industry, and niobium wire is mainly used in the production of high-strength low-alloy steel, stainless steel, heat-resistant steel, clearance steel, carbon steel, tool steel, rail steel, casting steel.

Superalloys can be produced by adding tantalum or niobium to tungsten, molybdenum, nickel, cobalt, vanadium, ferroalloys, or by using tantalum and niobium as bases, which are important structural materials for aerospace engines, ground-based air turbine engines, modern weapons, and harsh industrial environment facilities.

Because of the good superconductivity of niobium and tantalum metal, the addition of niobium and tantalum into the materials used to make wires and cables can greatly reduce the loss of power and thus save power. Tantalum and niobium are excellent materials for acid and liquid metal corrosion resistance, so they can be used in the chemical industry for digesters, heaters, coolers, and various device containers. Besides that, tantalum and niobium metals and their alloys can also be used as reactor shell materials and high-energy physics superconducting devices.

superconducting devices

Industry’s outlook

With the development of high and new technology in the world, such as electronics, metallurgy, aerospace, and aviation, the international market demands for the smelting and processing of rare metals such as tantalum powder and tantalum wire, tantalum niobium crystal materials and niobium alloy are increasing day by day. Currently, major tantalum and niobium metal smelters and processing industries around the world are carrying out global economic integration, and actively exploring the market to improve the market share.

Stanford Advanced Materials supplies high-quality tantalum and niobium products to meet our customers’ R&D and production needs. Please visit http://www.samaterials.com for more information.