Zirconium metal is available in form of powders, chunks, ingots, lumps, pieces, sheets, foils, particles, slugs, cylinders, rods, cubes and targets. It is light gray metal or gray amorphous powder, which is insoluble in water, but soluble in hot concentrated acid, hydrofluoric acid, aqua regia and concentrated sulfuric acid. It is known as sponge zirconium. Zirconium metal is relatively stable in air, however zirconium powder is easy to ignite in air at high temperature and turns out zirconium dioxide. Zirconia is raw material for ceramics, grinding granules, zirconium oxide ZrO2 fiber, plastic and rubber. Zirkonium powder is with purity 99% normally. The purity of sponge Zr powder is 99.4%. However the purity of zirconium lump reach 99.9%. Fine zirconium wires can be ignited by match. At high temperature, it can compound with oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen.
Zirconium is attractive to oxygen, which could take away oxygen from magnesium oxide, beryllium oxide and thorium oxide and form ZrO2 itself. It owns strong hydrogen absorption property. The maximum hydrogen absorption capacity is equal to ZrH1.93, which can be raw material hydrogen storage material. If the hydrogen absorption capacity is higher than the hydrogen content of ZrH, the brittleness of zirconium increase, which is easy to process powder. Zirconium owns good corrosion resistance to diluted hydrochloric acid and dilute sulphuric acid. Its corrosion resistance is better than tantalum metal when mix with 50% NaOH soluation. So it gets great prospect in chemical industry. With 2% Hafnium in zirconium, it wouldn’t affect the corrosion resistance, however it should separate Hf when Zr act as clad material of nuclear reactor material parts.
Zirconium Metal Powder
| CAS No.:7440-67-7 | EINECS No.:231-176-9 | Molecular Formula:Zr | Molecular Weight:91.224 |
| Melting Point:1852℃ | Boiling Point:3577℃ | Ignition Temperature:>200℃ | Density:6.51 |
Applications
Zirconium powder is for preparation of nuclear industry, corrosion resistance alloy, flashlight and fireworks. It also apply to deoxidizing agent for metallurgy and chemical reagents.
The standard size of zirconium slugs are 1.2*3.5mm, 2*3mm and 1.5mm*3mm. The thick of zirconium foils are 0.2mm and 0.3mm usually. However other sizes could be customizable. Both two products are for vacuum coating, which are sputtering targets.
Zirconium alloy (ZrTh, ZrMg) is light and high-temperature resistance, which could be raw material for aircraft.