zirconium plate – Zirconium Metal

Zirconium Metals in Different Forms

Zirconium, with its notable properties like excellent corrosion resistance, high melting point, and exceptional durability, is crafted into various forms to cater to specific industry needs. Each form offers unique characteristics making it suitable for particular applications. Here’s a closer look at the different forms of zirconium metals and their distinct uses:

1. Zirconium Plates

Zirconium plates and sheets find widespread application in the aerospace industry, valued for their resistance to high temperatures and corrosion. Manufacturers also prefer them for crafting chemical processing equipment, thanks to their superior resilience against acids and alkalis.

2. Zirconium Pipes

Zirconium pipes and tubes play a crucial role in the nuclear industry. They act as cladding for nuclear fuel rods because they absorb neutrons at a low rate. Their resistance to corrosion also makes them perfect for chemical plant piping systems.

3. Zirconium Bars

Manufacturers use them in surgical devices and medical implants, capitalizing on Zr’s biocompatibility. The automotive industry also relies on them for components that must endure harsh conditions.

4.Zirconium Strips

Zirconium strips are widely used in electronics for their conductivity and corrosion resistance, and in aerospace for their heat resistance. Zr strips also find applications in medical devices due to zirconium’s biocompatibility. Additionally, their ability to be anodized makes them popular in decorative applications.

5. Other Zirconium Products

Zirconium Sponge serves as a primary source for producing high-purity zirconium and its alloys. This transitional form plays a crucial role in the metallurgical process to obtain the metal in its pure or alloyed state.

Zirconium Meshes find use in filtration and sieving, especially in corrosive environments. Their applications also extend to aerospace and medical implants, taking advantage of zirconium’s structural integrity and biocompatibility.

Zirconium Crucibles offer exceptional resistance to high temperatures and corrosion, making them ideal for use in laboratory experiments and industrial processes that require melting or holding highly reactive materials. Their durability and ability to withstand aggressive chemical environments without contamination make them a preferred choice for applications in the chemical analysis, metallurgy, and materials science fields.

Advanced Refractory Metals (ARM) is a leading supplier of a wide range of zirconium products. Their offerings likely include a variety of forms such as zirconium plates, zirconium pipes, zirconium strips, etc. Each product is designed to leverage zirconium’s notable properties, such as high temperature and corrosion resistance, low neutron absorption rate, biocompatibility, and structural integrity. For more details, please check the table below.

Table 1. Zirconium Metals in Different Forms

Zirconium Product	Applications	Attributes
Zirconium Plates	Aerospace industry, chemical processing equipment	High temperature and corrosion resistance, resistance against acids and alkalis
Zirconium Pipes	Nuclear industry as cladding for fuel rods, chemical plant piping systems	Low neutron absorption rate, corrosion resistance
Zirconium Bars	Surgical devices and medical implants, automotive components	Biocompatibility, durability under harsh conditions
Zirconium Strips	Electronics, aerospace, medical devices	Conductivity, corrosion resistance, heat resistance
Zirconium Sponge	Producing high-purity zirconium and alloys, metallurgical processes	High-purity production, crucial in metallurgical processes
Zirconium Meshes	Filtration and sieving in corrosive environments, aerospace, and medical implants	Structural integrity, biocompatibility, suitable for corrosive environments
Zirconium Crucibles	Laboratory experiments and industrial processes for melting/holding reactive materials, chemical analysis, metallurgy, materials science	High temperature and corrosion resistance, durable

The versatility of zirconium in its various forms allows for its widespread use across multiple industries, including aerospace, nuclear energy, medical, chemical processing, and beyond. This adaptability stems from its remarkable physical and chemical properties, which engineers and scientists continue to leverage in developing advanced technologies and solutions.

Why Are Zirconia Ceramic Teeth So Expensive?

The all-ceramic dental prosthesis has excellent mechanical properties, no gingival inflammation, and excellent biocompatibility, and it has no obstruction to X-ray rays. In addition, it has excellent wear resistance, corrosion resistance, and aesthetic properties of no gingival black edge and emulating natural teeth, all of these make it the first choice of dental repair materials.

Zirconia ceramic teeth

At present, there are three kinds of materials used in all-ceramic dental restorations, namely, zirconia all-ceramic dental restorations, cast ceramic dental restorations and alumina all-ceramic dental restorations.

Among the three kinds of all-ceramic teeth, zirconia all-ceramic teeth are the strongest dental restorations. Its fracture toughness ratio is two or three times that of alumina all-ceramic, and it is not easy to break the teeth with it; secondly, it can be used for cosmetic dentistry and restoration of missing teeth. It can be used to repair multiple teeth, which can be used to repair even crowns, which can perfectly solve the problem that the strength of ceramic casting material is too poor to make continuous crown; moreover, its color is perfectly adjustable, so it can be used to make very realistic dentures.

Zirconia denture, as such an excellent product, should have been favored by the public. But zirconia restorations are expensive, costing thousands or even thousands of dollars for a single crown, which makes it unaffordable for ordinary people.

Why are zirconia ceramic teeth so expensive?

The main reason for the high price of zirconia ceramic teeth is that the overall production cost of zirconia teeth is really high.

The zirconia prosthesis underwent a series of complex processes before it was put into the patient’s mouth to achieve its chewing, vocal and aesthetic functions, including raw material production of raw material manufacturers, production of zirconia block manufacturers, dental surgeons’ spare tooth mold, processing design, selection of the right zirconium block, cutting, dyeing, sintering, dyeing, polishing, dental doctor’s grinding, etc. As long as one of the above processes goes wrong, it will affect the currently visible quality of the restoration or the currently invisible but potential quality problems in the future.

Zirconium blocks used for all-ceramic teeth can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars just from the cost of materials alone. From the above analysis, we can see that the proportion of the raw material cost is not large, but the difficulty of processing leads to an increase in the overall preparation cost.

At present, the forming of zirconia ceramic crowns is dominated by CNC processing technology, which has advantages in product precision and processing efficiency. However, due to the material removal by cutting tools on zirconium plates (blocks) during processing, the cost of ceramic crowns remains high due to the waste of materials and the wear of cutting needles, and microcracks are easily introduced in the cutting process, leading to the failure of the restoration. The current zirconia denture is semi-machined, and the zirconia teeth processed by a professional milling machine need to be used to repair the maxillofacial fossae and furrows with a crack drill or a ball drill to achieve a realistic effect. If human ingenuity is lacking, it can also be said that it has a little personality in shape and edge treatment.

To sum up, the waste of raw materials and the high labor cost of advanced technical workers inevitably increase the preparation cost of zirconia teeth due to the inevitable mistakes in manual processing. Therefore, seeking a new dental ceramic prosthesis forming technology is the characteristic of dental ceramic research and the key point of the clinical prosthesis.

What are the uses of Zirconium in the Vacuum Industry?

As a rare metal, zirconium is widely used in the fields of aerospace, military industry, nuclear reaction and atomic energy due to its remarkable corrosion resistance, extremely high melting point, ultra-high hardness, and strength.

The surface of zirconium is easy to form a glossy layer of the oxide film, so its appearance is similar to that of steel. Zirconium is resistant to corrosion but dissolves in hydrofluoric acid and aqua regia, and it can react with non-metallic elements and many metallic elements to form a solid solution at a high temperature. Zirconium has good plasticity and is easy to be processed into zirconium plate and zirconium wire. Besides that, zirconium can absorb a lot of gases such as oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen when heated, and can be used as hydrogen storage material. Zirconium and hafnium are two metals with similar chemical properties, which are symbiotic and contain radioactive materials.

The zirconium can absorb nitrogen violently when the temperature exceeds 900 degrees Celsius. At 200 degrees Celsius, 100 grams of metal zirconium can absorb 817 liters of hydrogen, equivalent to more than 800,000 times the hydrogen absorption capacity of iron. This characteristic of zirconium has been widely used. In the electric vacuum industry, for example, zirconium powder is coated on the surfaces of the anodes and other heated parts of the electric vacuum elements and instruments to absorb the residual gas in the vacuum tube, thus making the vacuum tube and other vacuum instruments, which have better quality and longer service life.

Zirconium can also be used as a “Vitamin” in the metallurgical industry, playing a powerful role in deoxygenation, nitrogen removal, and sulfur removal. For example, if a thousandth of zirconium is added to steel, its hardness and strength will increase dramatically. Zirconium-containing armor steel, stainless steel, and heat-resistant steel are important materials for the manufacture of defense weapons such as armored vehicles, tanks, artillery and bulletproof panels. When zirconium is mixed into copper and drawn into copper wire, its electrical conductivity does not weaken but the melting point is greatly improved, so it is very suitable to be used as a high-voltage wire. Zinc-magnesium alloys containing zirconium, which are light and high temperature resistant, are twice as strong as conventional magnesium alloys and can be used in the manufacture of jet engine components.

Zirconium alloy is a nonferrous alloy that is composed of zirconium as the matrix and other elements are added, and the main alloy elements are tin, niobium, iron, and so on. Zirconium alloys have good corrosion resistance, moderate mechanical properties, low atomic thermal neutron absorption cross-section, and good compatibility with nuclear fuel in the high-pressure water and steam of 300 ~ 400 ℃, which is mainly used as core structure material of water-cooled nuclear reactors. Besides that, zirconium has excellent corrosion resistance to a variety of acids, bases, and salts, and has a strong affinity with gases such as oxygen and nitrogen, and they are also used in the manufacture of corrosion-resistant and pharmaceutical mechanical components, as well as the non-evapotranspiration disinfectant in the electric vacuum and light bulb industries.

Stanford Advanced Materials supplies high-quality zirconium products to meet our customers’ R&D and production needs. Please visit http://www.samaterials.com for more information.