Niobium, also known as columbium, is a chemical element with the symbol Nb and atomic number 41. It is a light grey, crystalline, and ductile transition metal. Its name comes from Greek mythology, specifically Niobe, who was the daughter of Tantalus, the namesake of tantalum.
About Niobium in brief
Niobium, also known as columbium, is a chemical element with the symbol Nb and atomic number 41. It is a light grey, crystalline, and ductile transition metal. Its name comes from Greek mythology, specifically Niobe, who was the daughter of Tantalus, the namesake of tantalum. Niobium oxidizes in the earth’s atmosphere very slowly, hence its application in jewelry as a hypoallergenic alternative to nickel. It was not until the early 20th century that niobium was first used commercially. The element is used mostly in alloys, the largest part in special steel such as that used in gas pipelines. These alloys contain a maximum of 0.1%, but small percentage of niobIUM enhances the strength of the steel. The temperature stability of Niobiam-containing superalloys is important for its use in jet and rocket engines. It also is used in various superconducting materials, also containing titanium and tin, and is widely used in thesuperconducting magnets of MRI scanners. It has a Mohs hardness rating similar to that of pure titanium, and it has similar ductility to iron. It can also be found in the minerals pyrochlore and columbite, hence the former name \”columbium\”. It was officially adopted as the name of the element in 1949, but the name columbum remains in current use in metallurgy in the United States.
The name NiobIUM is used to refer to the element that was discovered by Charles Hatchett in 1801 and named after the city of Columbia, the poetical name for the U.S. The new element was found in a mineral sample sent to England from Connecticut in 1734 by John Winthrop F. R. S. and named the mineral Columbite. Subsequently, there was considerable confusion over the difference between columbio and the closely related tantalum, and for a century both names were used interchangeably. The claimed new elements pelopium, ilmenium, and dianium were in fact identical to niobrium or mstrandte. The differences between tantalum and niobiam were unequivocally demonstrated in 1864 and 1865 by Christian Blomand and Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville, who determined the formulas of some of the compounds. Although it was not the first century until 1866, it wasn’t the early 19th century until it was used on a larger scale by it was first prepared by Jean Galissard de Marignac in 1866. In 1871, the first to prepare the metal in larger scale, when he reduced it to tantalum-free by heating it in an atmosphere of hydrogen chloride in an hydrogen-free atmosphere of the hydrogen gas, he reduced the metal to niobium-free tantalum in an hydrogen-free hydrogen gas atmosphere of a larger atmosphere of hydrogen gas.
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This page is based on the article Niobium published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 20, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
