Tantalum wire is a filament-shaped material made from high-purity metal tantalum (Ta, with a purity typically ≥99.95%) or tantalum alloys (such as tantalum-tungsten alloys, tantalum-niobium alloys) through the process of "powder metallurgy - plastic processing - precision treatment". The core features include a high melting point (2996℃), excellent corrosion resistance (stable to strong acids and strong alkalis), good cold workability and superconductivity (at low temperatures), and are mainly used in electronic components (such as anode wires of capacitors), high-temperature furnace heating elements, medical implants, aerospace precision parts and other fields. Its preparation needs to overcome technical difficulties such as "high-purity control, prevention of cracking during plastic processing, and stable dimensional accuracy". The core process is divided into raw material preparation, powder metallurgy billet formation, plastic processing (rolling/drawing), and subsequent fine treatment.
Raw material preparation: High-purity tantalum powder is the foundation. Tantalum wire has extremely high requirements for the purity of raw materials (oxygen content ≤0.1%, impurity elements such as Fe, Ni, C, and N≤50ppm). Impurities can increase the brittleness of tantalum wire and reduce its electrical and thermal conductivity. Therefore, the core of raw material preparation is "tantalum ore purification - reduction of metallic tantalum powder", and the mainstream process is the fluoride-sodium thermal reduction method.
Plastic processing: From tantalum billet to Tantalum wire (core link). Tantalum has excellent cold working performance (with an elongation rate of over 30% at room temperature), but it needs to be gradually reduced in diameter through "hot working pretreatment + multiple cold drawing passes" to avoid excessive deformation in a single pass leading to cracking. The core lies in "controlling deformation, intermediate annealing, and mold matching", which is specifically divided into two steps: "blank opening and rolling - multiple drawing passes".
After drawing, tantalum wire needs to go through "heat treatment - surface treatment - quality inspection" to ensure it meets application requirements (such as high electrical conductivity for electronic wire and high corrosion resistance for medical wire).
