Wednesday, December 14, 2011

What is Rare and scattered metals

Rare and scattered metals would probably be correct to say that today not a single new area of technology can do without rare metals, their alloys or compounds. Gallium is a chemical element. For example, fine-filament suspensions for navigation instruments of high precision are made from rhenium alloys; gallium goes into the manufac-ture of so-called liquid seals in vacuum equipment and high-temperature thermometers and pressure gauges; cesium is the most important compo-nent of photocells used in flaw detectors and some other instruments; hafnium is the material from which control rods of nuclear reactors are made and is also promising as a component of superalloys being de-veloped for aviation and rocketry; a thin layer of indium deposited on ball-bearings protects them from erosion and increases

Elemental gallium does not occur in nature, but as the gallium(III) salt in trace amounts in bauxite and zinc ores. Atomic weight: 69.723. A soft silvery metallic poor metal, elemental gallium is a brittle solid at low temperatures. The thermodynamics of extracting In(III) with diethylhexylmonothiophosphoric acid as an extractant in a H2SO4 system is reported. As it liquefies slightly above room temperature, it will melt in the hand. Its melting point is used as a temperature reference point, and from its discovery in 1875 to the semiconductor era, its primary uses were in high-temperature thermometric applications and in preparation of metal alloys with unusual properties of stability, or ease of melting; some being liquid at room temperature or below.

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