H.C. Starck Tantalum & Niobium changes name to Taniobis
July 1, 2020
As of July 1, 2020, H.C. Starck Tantalum & Niobium has announced that it is operating under the Taniobis brand name. Taniobis will continue to offer a wide range of materials, powders, and alloys based on tantalum and niobium.
Taniobis uses these rare ores and refractory metals to produce high-performance powders on an individual basis for its customers. These materials are important in a range if industries, including automotive, energy, aviation, electronics, the chemical industry and the medical technology industry.
The supply and development of Ta and Nb materials also supports global trends in areas including the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, smart cities, and connectivity, where current developments are heavily dependent on tantalum and niobium.
For example, in data communication, the goal is to filter and set transmission frequencies on an exact basis: this takes place via surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters based on niobium oxide and tantalum oxide. For processing data using high-performance processors, an ultrathin layer containing tantalum ensures ongoing disruption-free operation.
Taniobis also processes tantalum for tantalum electrolytic capacitors. These items are essential to advanced microelectronics, as they have extremely high energy density. This makes it possible to design ultra-small components with high conductivity, which is important in the IoT segment in particular. That makes them interesting for the connected driving and connected cars segment as well. Capacitor powders form the basis for mobile and security-related applications in connected (i.e. smart) cars.
In the IoT context, a thin layer based on tantalum is essential when it comes to making copper an option as a conductor material for high-speed processors. Without this layer, Cu ions would destroy the processors’ semiconducting properties. The tantalum layers are not only necessary for logical data chips; they are also needed for storage chips such as flash memory and SSDs.
These advantages are also critical when it comes to big data, a topic which has become increasingly relevant since the rapid rise of global wireless data access has made high-speed data processing even more crucial. It also takes on special importance in light of the growing trend toward assisted driving and even autonomous driving.
Additive Manufacturing is another important area of application. Taniobis is a leader in the development of biocompatible alloys for the production of patient-specific implants made using AM. The TANIOBIS development known as AMtrinsic is of particular interest in this context; these pre-alloyed high-performance powders were developed specifically for AM.
Thanks to the unique intrinsic properties of tantalum and niobium, such as high melting points, high resistance to corrosion, extremely high resistance to chemicals, and high thermal and electrical conductivity, Ta and Nb and alloys containing these elements are suitable for a wide range of high-tech applications in fields such as the chemical industry, the energy segment, in superconductors and in high-temperature environments.
