Niobium

Uses

Niobium’s defining modern application is in superconducting magnets: alloyed with titanium or tin, it becomes superconducting at very low temperatures while remaining practical to manufacture into wire and coils, making it the standard material for the powerful magnets used in MRI scanners and large particle accelerators. A much larger volume of niobium, however, goes into steelmaking, where even small amounts added to steel significantly increase its strength, which is valuable for pipelines, automotive components and structural construction.

Niobium is also popular in jewelry and body piercings, since it’s hypoallergenic and can be anodized to produce a striking range of colors without using any dye, purely through controlled oxide layer thickness on its surface.

History

Niobium was discovered in 1801 by English chemist Charles Hatchett, who found it in a mineral sample sent to London from Connecticut and initially named it columbium. Years later, chemists realized that columbium was extremely difficult to distinguish from tantalum, a similar element discovered around the same time, and for decades many scientists believed the two were actually the same element. The confusion was eventually resolved, and in 1949 the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry formally adopted the name niobium, after Niobe, the mythological daughter of Tantalus, extending the family connection between the two closely related elements into their names.