Tantalum alloys are used in the aerospace industry as high-temperature structural materials. Tantalum and tantalum alloy products include plates, strips, foils, bars, wires, profiles, and sintered products.
Pure tantalum has good plasticity, low deformation resistance, and a low work hardening rate. Various profiles and custom-shaped parts can be produced using plastic processing methods. Pure tantalum can be rolled into plates, strips, foils, tubes, and bars at room temperature, with a processing rate exceeding 90%. To reduce oxidation, plastic processing of pure tantalum is usually carried out at room temperature or below 500°C. Due to its high strength and poor ingot plasticity, tantalum alloys must first be billeted at temperatures above 1200°C, and subsequent processing is the same as for pure tantalum. The extrusion ratio should be greater than 4, and the forging ratio should be greater than 2. During billet heating and billeting, gas contamination that reduces material plasticity must be prevented. To ensure good stamping and spinning performance, cross-rolling is used. The processing rate before cross-rolling should be maintained at around 80%. Tantalum plates can be spun and deep-drawn into parts of different shapes such as cups, caps, tubes, cones, and nozzles. The diameter of the forged bar used for wire drawing is generally 2.5 mm. Because tantalum is soft and easily adheres to the mold and scratches the surface, the wire surface is often anodized to form an oxide film before wire drawing, and then lubricated with beeswax.
Tantalum-tungsten alloy is a solid solution alloy formed by metallic tantalum as the matrix and tungsten as the alloying element. It has both a high melting point (about 3080℃) and high temperature corrosion resistance. Commonly used grades include Ta10W (containing 10% tungsten) and Ta2.5W (containing 2.5% tungsten). Its strength and hardness increase with the increase of tungsten content, but its plasticity decreases. The production process covers core technologies such as powder metallurgy, vacuum sintering and electron beam melting. This alloy is used in the military field for key components such as EFP shaped charge covers and rocket nozzles. Tantalum-niobium alloy is an important metallic material composed of tantalum and niobium. It has a high melting point, oxidation resistance, excellent mechanical properties and corrosion resistance, and can remain stable under high temperature and extreme environments. Its application fields cover aerospace, chemical, electronic and medical fields, such as manufacturing aircraft engine parts, corrosion-resistant chemical equipment, capacitor materials and medical devices such as artificial joints.
Tantalum-titanium alloy is an alloy material composed of tantalum and titanium. It has excellent high-temperature strength and high-temperature oxidation resistance. It is mainly used in infrared camera tubes and micro-light tubes of national defense night vision equipment. By maintaining a long-term high vacuum state in the vacuum tube, the efficiency of the equipment and the clarity of the imaging are improved. The preparation adopts vacuum electron beam melting and vacuum self-consuming arc melting technology. By mixing tantalum powder and titanium powder in batches, combined with forging, rolling and multi-stage heat treatment processes, a uniform structure with a single-phase equiaxed β structure and a grain size rating of 7.5 is formed. This method has the characteristics of simple operation and easy industrialization.
Tantalum and its alloys, due to their excellent chemical stability, high-temperature mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, and processing capabilities, have been widely applied in numerous high-tech fields such as aerospace, metallurgy, chemical engineering, and nuclear industry. Recognizing the enormous application potential of tantalum and its alloys, scholars both domestically and internationally have conducted in-depth and extensive research, yielding rich results. Tantalum alloys possess relatively excellent room-temperature forming properties and high-temperature mechanical properties, demonstrating significant application potential in extreme environments. Because the fundamental strengthening mechanism of Ta alloys is solid solution strengthening, and the elements with the most significant strengthening effects are mainly W, Hf, and Nb, scholars both domestically and internationally have primarily developed Ta-W, Ta-Hf, and Ta-Nb alloys.
