About Titanium

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It is a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in sea water, aqua regia, and chlorine.

Titanium was discovered in Cornwall, Great Britain, by William Gregor in 1791 and was named by Martin Heinrich Klaproth after the Titans of Greek mythology. The element occurs within a number of mineral deposits, principally rutile and ilmenite, which are widely distributed in the Earth's crust and lithosphere; it is found in almost all living things, as well as bodies of water, rocks, and soils.^[6] The metal is extracted from its principal mineral ores by the Kroll^[7] and Hunter processes. The most common compound, titanium dioxide, is a popular photocatalyst and is used in the manufacture of white pigments.^[8] Other compounds include titanium tetrachloride (TiCl₄), a component of smoke screens and catalysts; and titanium trichloride (TiCl₃), which is used as a catalyst in the production of polypropylene.^[6]

Titanium can be alloyed with iron, aluminium, vanadium, and molybdenum, among other elements, to produce strong, lightweight alloys for aerospace (jet engines, missiles, and spacecraft), military, industrial processes (chemicals and petrochemicals, desalination plants, pulp, and paper), automotive, agriculture (farming), medical prostheses, orthopedic implants, dental and endodontic instruments and files, dental implants, sporting goods, jewelry, mobile phones, and other applications.^[6]

The two most useful properties of the metal are corrosion resistance and strength-to-density ratio, the highest of any metallic element.^[9] In its unalloyed condition, titanium is as strong as some steels, but less dense.^[10] There are two allotropic forms^[11] and five naturally occurring isotopes of this element, ⁴⁶Ti through ⁵⁰Ti, with ⁴⁸Ti being the most abundant (73.8%).^[12]

Characteristics

Physical properties

As a metal, titanium is recognized for its high strength-to-weight ratio.^[11] It is a strong metal with low density that is quite ductile (especially in an oxygen-free environment),^[6] lustrous, and metallic-white in color.^[13] The relatively high melting point (1,668 °C or 3,034 °F) makes it useful as a refractory metal. It is paramagnetic and has fairly low electrical and thermal conductivity compared to other metals.^[6] Titanium is superconducting when cooled below its critical temperature of 0.49 K.^[14][15]

Commercially pure (99.2% pure) grades of titanium have ultimate tensile strength of about 434 MPa (63,000 psi), equal to that of common, low-grade steel alloys, but are less dense. Titanium is 60% denser than aluminium, but more than twice as strong^[10] as the most commonly used 6061-T6 aluminium alloy. Certain titanium alloys (e.g., Beta C) achieve tensile strengths of over 1,400 MPa (200,000 psi).^[16] However, titanium loses strength when heated above 430 °C (806 °F).^[17]

Titanium is not as hard as some grades of heat-treated steel; it is non-magnetic and a poor conductor of heat and electricity. Machining requires precautions, because the material can gall unless sharp tools and proper cooling methods are used. Like steel structures, those made from titanium have a fatigue limit that guarantees longevity in some applications.^[13]

The metal is a dimorphic allotrope of an hexagonal α form that changes into a body-centered cubic (lattice) β form at 882 °C (1,620 °F).^[17] The specific heat of the α form increases dramatically as it is heated to this transition temperature but then falls and remains fairly constant for the β form regardless of temperature.^[17]

Chemical properties

Pourbaix diagram for titanium in pure water, perchloric acid, or sodium hydroxide^[18]

Like aluminium and magnesium, the surface of titanium metal and its alloys oxidize immediately upon exposure to air to form a thin non-porous passivation layer that protects the bulk metal from further oxidation or corrosion.^[6] When it first forms, this protective layer is only 1–2 nm thick but it continues to grow slowly, reaching a thickness of 25 nm in four years.^[19] This layer gives titanium excellent resistance to corrosion, almost equivalent to platinum.

Titanium is capable of withstanding attack by dilute sulfuric and hydrochloric acids, chloride solutions, and most organic acids.^[7] However, titanium is corroded by concentrated acids.^[20] As indicated by its negative redox potential, titanium is thermodynamically a very reactive metal that burns in normal atmosphere at lower temperatures than the melting point. Melting is possible only in an inert atmosphere or in a vacuum. At 550 °C (1,022 °F), it combines with chlorine.^[7] It also reacts with the other halogens and absorbs hydrogen.^[8]

Titanium readily reacts with oxygen at 1,200 °C (2,190 °F) in air, and at 610 °C (1,130 °F) in pure oxygen, forming titanium dioxide.^[11] Titanium is one of the few elements that burns in pure nitrogen gas, reacting at 800 °C (1,470 °F) to form titanium nitride, which causes embrittlement.^[21] Because of its high reactivity with oxygen, nitrogen, and many other gases, titanium that is evaporated from filaments is the basis for titanium sublimation pumps, in which titanium serves as a scavenger for these gases by chemically binding to them. Such pumps inexpensively produce extremely low pressures in ultra-high vacuum systems.

Occurrence

Titanium is the ninth-most abundant element in Earth's crust (0.63% by mass)^[22] and the seventh-most abundant metal. It is present as oxides in most igneous rocks, in sediments derived from them, in living things, and natural bodies of water.^[6][7] Of the 801 types of igneous rocks analyzed by the United States Geological Survey, 784 contained titanium. Its proportion in soils is approximately 0.5 to 1.5%.^[22]

Common titanium-containing minerals are anatase, brookite, ilmenite, perovskite, rutile, and titanite (sphene).^[19] Akaogiite is an extremely rare mineral consisting of titanium dioxide. Of these minerals, only rutile and ilmenite have economic importance, yet even they are difficult to find in high concentrations. About 6.0 and 0.7 million tonnes of those minerals were mined in 2011, respectively.^[23] Significant titanium-bearing ilmenite deposits exist in western Australia, Canada, China, India, Mozambique, New Zealand, Norway, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Ukraine.^[19] About 210,000 tonnes of titanium metal sponge were produced in 2020, mostly in China (110,000 t), Japan (50,000 t), Russia (33,000 t) and Kazakhstan (15,000 t). Total reserves of anatase, ilmenite, and rutile are estimated to exceed 2 billion tonnes.^[23]

The concentration of titanium is about 4 picomolar in the ocean. At 100 °C, the concentration of titanium in water is estimated to be less than 10⁻⁷ M at pH 7. The identity of titanium species in aqueous solution remains unknown because of its low solubility and the lack of sensitive spectroscopic methods, although only the 4+ oxidation state is stable in air. No evidence exists for a biological role, although rare organisms are known to accumulate high concentrations of titanium.^[24]

Titanium is contained in meteorites, and it has been detected in the Sun and in M-type stars^[7] (the coolest type) with a surface temperature of 3,200 °C (5,790 °F).^[25] Rocks brought back from the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission are composed of 12.1% TiO₂.^[7] Native titanium (pure metallic) is very rare.^[26]

Isotopes

Naturally occurring titanium is composed of five stable isotopes: ⁴⁶Ti, ⁴⁷Ti, ⁴⁸Ti, ⁴⁹Ti, and ⁵⁰Ti, with ⁴⁸Ti being the most abundant (73.8% natural abundance). At least 21 radioisotopes have been characterized, the most stable of which are ⁴⁴Ti with a half-life of 63 years; ⁴⁵Ti, 184.8 minutes; ⁵¹Ti, 5.76 minutes; and ⁵²Ti, 1.7 minutes. All other radioactive isotopes have half-lives less than 33 seconds, with the majority less than half a second.^[12]

The isotopes of titanium range in atomic weight from 39.002 u (³⁹Ti) to 63.999 u (⁶⁴Ti).^[27] The primary decay mode for isotopes lighter than ⁴⁶Ti is positron emission (with the exception of ⁴⁴Ti which undergoes electron capture), leading to isotopes of scandium, and the primary mode for isotopes heavier than ⁵⁰Ti is beta emission, leading to isotopes of vanadium.^[12]

Titanium becomes radioactive upon bombardment with deuterons, emitting mainly positrons and hard gamma rays.^[7]