American Elements: Tantalum Foil Supplier & Tech Info

See research below. American Elements specializes in producing Tantalum as rolled foils and sheets in various thicknesses and sizes. Most foils are produced from cast ingots for use in coating and thin film Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) processes including Ultra High Purity (99.9+%) thin film foil

Ultra High Purity (99.9+%) thin film foil

Thermal and Electron Beam (E-Beam) Evaporation, Low Temperature Organic Evaporation, Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), Organometallic and Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) for specific applications such as fuel cells and solar energy. Thickness can range from 0.003" to approximately 2mm for all metals. Some metals can also be rolled down as thin as 0.001". Piece sizes are available up to approximately 7" maximum width. Maximum lengths of about 20" can be obtained with a nominal thickness between about 0.005" and 0.020" for thin film deposition on glass or metal substrates. Materials are produced using crystallization, solid state and other ultra high purification processes such as sublimation. American Elements specializes in producing custom compositions for commercial and research applications and for new proprietary technologies. American Elements also casts any of the rare earth metals and most other advanced materials into rod, bar or plate form, as well as other machined shapes and through other processes such as nanoparticles (See also application discussion at Nanotechnology Information and at Quantum Dots) and in the form of solutions and organometallics. We also produce Tantalum as rods, powder and plates. Other shapes are available by request.

Tantalum is a Block D, Group 5, Period 6 element. The electronic configuration is [Xe] 4f¹⁴ 5d³ 6s². In its elemental form tantalum's CAS number is 7440-25-7. The tantalum atom has a radius of 143.pm and it's Van der Waals radius is 200.pm. Tantalum has a number of interesting properties that make it particularly useful in electronic applications. Tantalum is available as metal and compounds with purities from 99% to 99.999% (ACS grade to ultra-high purity); metals in the form of foil, sputtering target, and rod, and compounds as submicron and nanopowder. It has the third highest melting point, surpassed only by rhenium and tungsten, yet it is highly conductive to heat and electricity. This has made it the material of choice for electronic capacitors for most telecommunications and hand held electronics equipment, such as cell phones, laptop computers and pagers. Tantalum compounds, such as the oxide and chloride, are the basis for di-electric coatings. Tantalum is added to glass for its high refractive index. It has various applications in nuclear energy.