Metallic tantalum powder is manufactured by reducing tantalum oxide (Ta₂O₅) with magnesium gas at 1,073–1,223 K in a reactor under argon gas. The high thermodynamic stability of magnesium oxide makes the reduction reaction from tantalum oxide into tantalum powder possible. The microstructure after the reduction reaction has the form of a mixture of tantalum and magnesium oxide, and the latter could be entirely eliminated by dissolving in weak hydrochloric acid. The powder size in SEM microstructure for the tantalum powder increases after acid leaching in the range of 50–300 nm, and its internal crystallite sizes are observed to be 11.5 to 24.7 nm with increasing reduction temperatures. Moreover, the optimized reduction temperature is found to be 1,173 K as the minimum oxygen concentration is approximately 1.3 wt.%.

Citations

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• A review of tantalum resources and its production
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  Transactions of Nonferrous Metals Society of China.2023; 33(10): 3132.     CrossRef
• Valuable metal recovery from waste tantalum capacitors via cryogenic crushing-alkaline calcination-leaching process
  Longgong Xia, Xue Wei, Hongjun Wang, Fengchun Ye, Zhihong Liu
  Journal of Materials Research and Technology.2022; 16: 1637.     CrossRef