Extraction of Tantalum Powder via the Magnesium Reduction of Tantalum Pentoxide

Abstract

The metallic tantalum powder was successfully synthesized via reduction of tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) with magnesium gas at 1073~1223 K for 10 h inside the chamber held under an argon atmosphere. The powder obtained after reduction shows the Ta–MgO mixed structure and that the MgO component was dissolved and removed fully via stirring in a water-based HCl solution. The particle size in the tantalum powder obtained after acid leaching was shown to be in a range of 50~300 nm, and the mean internal crystallite sizes measured by the Scherrer equation varied from 11.5 to 24.7 nm according to the increase in reduction temperatures. The temperature satisfactory for a maximal reduction effect was found to be 1173 K because the oxygen content was minimally saturated to about 1.3 wt %.

Metals Powders: Synthesis and Processing

“…It consists of ten research papers focused on different materials and processes. The studied materials cover pure Ti [1,2] and Ta [3], and alloys with compositions Fe-Co-Cu [4]…”

“…Thus, Hwang at al. [3] studied the extraction of Ta powder, and Choi et al [2] the extraction of Ti. Ball milling is the technique used by Xiang et al [8] to obtain Mn-Bi powders with outstanding magnetic properties.…”

“…Several manuscripts [1][2][3][4]6,10] deal with crystalline materials, whereas other works [5,[7][8][9] use amorphous powders. According to the country of the corresponding author, three papers come from China [7][8][9], another three from Korea [2,3,6], two from Spain [5,10], one from USA-Spain [1], and one from Portugal [4]. In addition, authors from the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico and Romania have contributed to the different papers.…”

“…Different HCl acid leaching conditions are studied, finally obtaining a total oxygen content of the Ti powder of about 1 wt.%. On the other hand, Ta is obtained via reduction of tantalum pentoxide (Ta 2 O 5 ) with Mg gas [3]. The powder obtained again contains MgO, also dissolved and removed in a water-based HCl solution.…”

Metallic Niobium Powder Reduced by Atmospheric Magnesium Gas with Niobium Pentoxide Powder

“…The authors of the study had previously conducted research on the reduction of vanadium oxide (V 2 O 5 ) and tantalum oxide (Ta 2 O 5 ) for this purpose. 13,14) And, the previous works on the reduction of niobiumbased oxide by magnesium gas have been reported but they used not pure Nb 2 O 5 but Mg 4 Nb 2 O 9 as start material and fixed reduction temperature. 11,1517) And it could be found the research work on the magnesium gas reduction of pure Nb 2 O 5 with various reduction temperatures and times, 15) it was employed the sintered Nb 2 O 5 preform as start material and pressured magnesium gas by welded so isolated chamber, which structures may be difficult to be commercialized.…”