Scandium metal products
Despite being relatively abundant in the earth's crust, Scandium (Sc) is considered a costly element due to the absence of concentrated sources, except for a few minerals. The extraction process of this element mainly relies on its presence as a by-product of other minerals such as rare earth, uranium, or titanium. The current annual production rate of Scandium approximates 10t, though an increasing demand has led to enhanced production. Consequently, Scandium's primary application is for the Al-Sc alloy, yet its use in the optical and electronics industries has been rising due to the augmented implementation of scandium sputter targets.
The production of scandium metal is achieved through a fused salt electrolysis process, which involves turning scandium oxide into scandium fluoride then reducing it to its metal form via calcium. however, low-grade reduced scandium is generally impure, prompting purification by distillation, leading to a significant cost increase. despite scandium's silvery and soft composition, its oxide layer gives rise to a slight yellowish tint on surfaces.
Furthermore, the addition of Scandium to aluminum alloys results in a notable enhancement of the mechanical strength of aluminum. This is because Scandium's inclusion limits the grain size in Al alloys. Commonly, Al-Sc master alloys containing roughly 2% scandium are used, as well as in Al-Sc sputter targets. While higher percentages are achievable, more Scandium makes the material brittle and challenging to manufacture. Therefore, high percentage Scandium sputter targets are rarely produced, indicating that low demand and shortages of experienced manufacturers are culprits. Nevertheless, a growing demand for these high Scandium alloy sputter targets is attributable to the optimization of dedicated semiconductor components.
As rare earths are one of our major products, QS Advanced Materials provides our clients a wide range of sputter targets including Scandium (Sc) sputter targets. As the purification of rare earth elements is complex and it is important to be clean from contamination of other rare earth elements, the purity of Scandium (Sc) sputter target is usually marked as Sc/TREM>99.9% (or 99.99%) with TREM>99.5% or 99.9%. TREM means Total Rare Earth Metal. For Scandium (Sc) sputter targets, two purity grades are available. The preferred, distilled scandium, could obtain overall purity of greater than or equal to 99.9%, with very low rare earth impurities. Though expensive, distilled scandium is usually used in semiconductor applications. For Scandium (Sc) sputter targets, indium bonding to simple or custom made backing plates are available. Please send an email to Sales@QSrarematerials.com or submit an inquiry for availability and quotes.