Hafnium is a rare metal used in semiconductors for artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres, as well as in the aerospace sector. In the nuclear sector, its neutron-absorbing properties make it suitable for use as a material in control rods, which regulate reactor power.<\/p>\n
Hafnium occurs naturally in small quantities in zirconium ores. Because zirconium and hafnium have very similar chemical properties, however, separating and refining the two requires advanced technology, and there have been few examples of commercial hafnium production in Japan.<\/p>\n
Daiichi Kigenso currently refines zirconium ore at its production base in Vietnam to produce zirconium intermediates. These are then transported to Japan and processed into finished zirconium compounds at the company\u2019s domestic production facilities.<\/p>\n
Under the newly established process, the small quantities of hafnium contained in these intermediates are separated and refined in Japan using solvent extraction, a technique that selectively extracts specific components from a liquid.<\/p>\n
Daiichi Kigenso manufactures, sells, and conducts research and development on inorganic compounds, primarily zirconium compounds as well as rare-earth compounds. The company says that separating hafnium also makes it possible to further increase the purity of zirconium.<\/p>\n
Because of its low neutron absorption, zirconium is widely used in the nuclear industry, including in fuel cladding for nuclear reactors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hafnium is a rare metal used in semiconductors for artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres, as well as in the aerospace sector. In the nuclear sector, its neutron-absorbing properties make it suitable for use as a material in control rods, which regulate reactor power. Hafnium occurs naturally in small quantities in zirconium ores. Because zirconium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[1580,1361,1581,1583,1579,1584,1585,1577,1578,477,1586,1582],"class_list":["post-7984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-news","tag-aerospace-sector","tag-ai","tag-control-rods","tag-daiichi-kigenso","tag-data-centres","tag-fuel-cladding","tag-hafnium","tag-rare-metal","tag-semiconductor","tag-vietnam","tag-zirconium","tag-zirconium-ores"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7984"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7989,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7984\/revisions\/7989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaif.or.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}