Tantalum

Tantalum: or in Panerai-speak “Tantalium”

Atomic Number: 73
Atomic Symbol: Ta
Atomic Weight: 180.9479
Electron Configuration: [Xe]6s24f145d3


Tantalum is a greyish silver, heavy, and very hard metal. When pure, it is ductile and can be drawn into fine wire, which can be used as a filament for evaporating metals such as aluminium. Tantalum is almost completely immune to chemical attack at temperatures below 150°C, and is attacked only by hydrofluoric acid, acidic solutions containing the fluoride ion, and free sulphur trioxide. The element has a melting point exceeded only by tungsten and rhenium.

Production:

Separation of tantalum from niobium requires several complicated steps. Several methods are used to commercially produce the element, including electrolysis of molten potassium fluorotantalate, reduction of potassium fluorotantalate with sodium, or reacting tantalum carbide with tantalum oxide. Twenty five isotopes of tantalum are known to exist. Natural tantalum contains two isotopes


Uses:

The following uses for tantalum are gathered from a number of sources as well as from anecdotal comments. I'd be delighted to receive corrections as well as additional referenced uses (please use the feedback mechanism to add uses).

Tantalum metal has a number of important uses. It is used to make steels with desirable properties such as high melting point, high strength, good ductility. These find use in aircraft and missile manufacture. It is very inert and so useful in the chemical and nuclear industries to line reactors. Tantalum wires were those used first for light bulbs (now tungsten is preferred). The metal is immune to body liquids and the body tolerates the metal well. Therefore, tantalum has widespread use for surgical use. For instance, it can be used in sutures and as cranial repair plates. The metal is used in the electronics industry for capacitors.

The oxide is used to make special glass with a high index of refraction for camera lenses.

Scientists at Los Alamos have produced a tantalum carbide graphite composite material, which is said to be one of the hardest materials ever made.

Tantalum can replace bone, for example in skull plates; as foil or wire it connects torn nerves; as woven gauze it binds abdominal muscle. Tantalum has also been used to make a variety of alloys.

Tantalum is aften used as a low coast substitute for Platinum & Gold in industrial applications...Price per oz for Ta is ~$200 (2000) up from ~$50 per oz in 1998.

History:

Discovered by: Anders Ekeberg

Discovered at: Sweden

Discovered when: 1802

Origin of name: From the Greek word "Tantalos" meaning "father of Niobe" (Greek mythology, (tantalum is closely related to niobium in the periodic table)
Niobium was discovered in 1802 by Anders Gustaf Ekeberg, but many chemists thought niobium and tantalum were one and the same. The first relatively pure ductile tantalum was produced by von Bolton in 1903.

More on Mythiology:

Tantalus was the son of Zeus and the Titan Pluto. Tantalus became immortal by conversing and dining with the Gods. He betrayed them by sharing their food and their secrets with his friends. As punishment, he was placed in water that was up to his chin that he could never drink in a place where there was fruit dangling above his head that he could never reach.

The word "tantalize" comes from the plight of the mythological Tantalus, who so offended the gods that he was condemned in the afterlife to an eternity of hunger and thirst. He was made to stand in a pool in Tartarus, the Underworld zone of punishment. Each time he reached down for the water that beckoned to his parched lips, it drained away. Overhanging the pool were boughs laden with luscious fruit. But each time Tantalus stretched to pluck this juicy sustenance, the boughs receded from his grasp. For his crime, which may have entailed stealing ambrosia from the gods, this great sinner was tantalized indeed.