Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2024-09-02 Origin: Site
Niobium is a versatile metal with unique properties that make it essential across multiple industries. Its ability to enhance strength, resistance, and durability in various applications has made it a key material in the fields of steel production, superconductivity, electronics, aerospace, medicine, and more. In this article, we will explore the primary fields where niobium is used and the crucial roles it plays in advancing technology and industry.
- Improving steel performance: About 85%-90% of the world's niobium is used in steel production in the form of ferroniobium. Adding a small amount of niobium (generally 0.03%-0.05%) to steel can increase the yield strength of steel by more than 30%. Niobium can also refine the grains, while increasing the strength of steel, maintaining good toughness and plasticity. For example, high-strength low-alloy steel containing niobium is used to build oil (gas) pipelines, construction steel, etc.
- Improving high-temperature performance: Adding niobium can improve the high-temperature oxidation resistance of steel, and can be used to cast stainless steel and heat-resistant steel.
- Producing special steel: Adding 0.02% niobium and titanium to steel can produce gapless steel, which is used in automobile manufacturing, etc.; micro-niobium carbon steel can be processed into various profiles, such as castings, forgings, coils, plates, wires, pipes, strips, bars, etc.
- Manufacturing superconductors: Some compounds and alloys of niobium have a high superconducting transition temperature, so they are widely used to manufacture various industrial superconductors, such as superconducting generators, accelerator high-power magnets, superconducting magnetic energy storage devices, etc.
- Medical diagnostic equipment: Submillimeter wave direct detectors based on niobium superconducting tunnel junctions have wide-band response and high sensitivity. Niobium-titanium and niobium-tin are widely used in magnetic resonance imaging devices for medical diagnosis and nuclear magnetic resonance devices for spectral line (analysis).
- Manufacturing capacitors: Niobium and its low-valent oxide NbO are used to make capacitors. NBO capacitors have the characteristics of high performance, high reliability and low cost.
- Electronic devices: Niobium has a high melting point, strong electron emission ability, and air absorption ability, and can be used to make electron tubes and other electric vacuum devices.
4. Aerospace industry:
- Manufacturing parts: Since niobium alloy is a material with a lower density among refractory metals, and has high strength and excellent welding performance at 1100-1650℃, good room temperature plasticity, and can be made into various parts with complex shapes, it is widely used in the manufacture of aircraft engine parts, gas turbine blades, etc.
- Thermal protection materials: It can be used as a preferred thermal protection material and structural material in hypersonic aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, missiles and supersonic low-altitude rockets.
5. Medical field: Niobium has good physiological corrosion resistance and biocompatibility. It will not react with various liquid substances in the human body, and will hardly damage the body tissue of organisms. It can adapt to any sterilization method, so it is often used to manufacture bone plates, skull plate bone screws, implant roots, surgical instruments, etc.
6. Atomic energy industry: Niobium has high thermal conductivity, high melting point, good corrosion resistance, and low neutron capture cross section. It is a material suitable for atomic reactors. Its main uses include nuclear fuel cladding materials, nuclear fuel alloys, and structural materials for heat exchangers in nuclear reactors.
7. Chemical industry: Niobium is a high-quality acid-resistant and liquid metal corrosion-resistant material, which can be used to make digesters, heaters and coolers. In addition, niobium acid is also an important catalyst.
8. Optical industry: Niobium helps to increase the light transmittance of lenses and can be applied to the manufacture of lenses in the optical industry. Potassium sodium niobate-based ceramics have excellent transparency, fast charging and discharging speed, and a wide temperature adaptability range. They can be used as transparent energy storage medium materials.
9. Foundry industry: The main function of niobium is to form hard carbides (beneficial to wear resistance) and change the morphology and size of graphite sheets. Therefore, it is often used to manufacture automobile cylinder heads, piston rings and brake pads.
In summary, niobium's exceptional properties, including its ability to improve strength, high-temperature performance, and corrosion resistance, make it an invaluable resource across a wide range of industries. From enhancing steel production to advancing medical technology and the aerospace sector, niobium continues to be a critical component in technological innovation. Its role in future applications is likely to expand as industries seek more efficient and reliable materials for their products.
