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Material World
Element · W

Tungsten

The highest melting point of any metal, which is why lightbulb filaments were made of it and why it is used to drill through everything else.

Refractory Abrasive

Tungsten melts at 3,422 °C, higher than any other metal, and that single property has defined its applications. Incandescent lamp filaments were tungsten because nothing else stays solid at white heat. Rocket nozzles and furnace elements use it for the same reason.

Its carbide is nearly as hard as diamond and far tougher, which makes tungsten carbide the standard material for cutting tools, mining bits and anything expected to abrade rock. Tungsten is also unusually dense — comparable to gold — which suits it to counterweights and radiation shielding.

Name origin

From Swedish tung sten, 'heavy stone'. Its symbol W comes from wolfram, the German name, after the ore wolframite, which was said to devour tin during smelting 'as a wolf devours a sheep'.

Uses

Tungsten's uses follow from its melting point, which is the highest of any metal, and its density, which is close to gold's.

Tungsten carbide — the metal bonded with carbon in a cobalt matrix — is the standard material for cutting tools, drill bits and mining teeth, and accounts for most consumption. The pure metal makes electrodes for arc welding, X-ray tube targets and the filaments of the incandescent lamps that are now largely gone. Its density puts it in radiation shielding, aircraft ballast, armour-piercing rounds and, increasingly, jewellery.

Medium confidence Weak evidence

How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.

How this connects

Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.

is used as

  • Lighting — application · the incandescent filament, chosen for melting point alone
  • Alloying — application · in tool and high-speed steels
  • Abrasive — application · as tungsten carbide

is extracted from

  • Scheelite — mineral · one of the two commercial tungsten ores Wikidata

is produced by

  • Smelting — process · reduced from the oxide, at a temperature few other metals demand

is an alternative to

  • Molybdenum — element · in tool and high-speed steels, where molybdenum gives comparable hot hardness at roughly half the density and much of the world's tungsten supply sits in one country
  • Lead — element · as a dense material for weights, shot and shielding, and adopted for being non-toxic rather than for performing better — the same reason bismuth replaced it in solder

is found in

  • Tungsten carbide — compound · half the atoms, and most of the mass — carbide is where the majority of the world's tungsten ends up Wikidata
  • High-speed steel — alloy · 0–20% · the original red-hardness element, forming carbides stable at temperatures that soften everything else
  • Cobalt-chromium alloy — alloy · 0–15% · in the wear-resistant and high-temperature grades instead of molybdenum
  • Scheelite — mineral Wikidata

is a component of

  • Nickel superalloy — alloy · 0–10% · a heavy addition that stiffens the lattice against creep

is used in

  • Incandescent lamp — object · the filament, and the reason the metal has an industry — nothing else stays solid at the temperature useful light requires
  • Smartphone — object · the vias in the chip, and the mass in the vibration motor — the fourth of the 3TG

Sources

  • Material World
    Our own writing
  • Wikidata
    Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
  • PubChem
    US National Library of Medicine · Mixed — aggregated third-party content, rights retained by depositors
  • NIST — National Institute of Standards and Technology
    United States Department of Commerce · US Government work — public information, credit requested

Questions this page answers

Where it comes from, and what it becomes

Follow Tungsten back to what it starts as, and forward into what it becomes. Each step is a documented one — a real route material takes, not a chain of inference.

Upstream — what it comes from

  • Tungsten → is produced by (reduced from the oxide, at a temperature few other metals demand) → Smelting → takes as input (as the element removed, not added) → Oxygen → is produced by (the largest output by tonnage, and the reason air separation units sit beside steelworks) → Air separation → takes as input (the feedstock, and an unusual one in being free, unlimited and available anywhere — the cost is entirely the energy to liquefy it) → Air
  • Tungsten → is extracted from (one of the two commercial tungsten ores) → Scheelite
  • Tungsten → is produced by (reduced from the oxide, at a temperature few other metals demand) → Smelting → takes as input (roasted to drive off sulfur, then reduced to copper) → Chalcopyrite
  • Tungsten → is produced by (reduced from the oxide, at a temperature few other metals demand) → Smelting → takes as input (reduced with carbon to metallic tin) → Cassiterite
  • Tungsten → is produced by (reduced from the oxide, at a temperature few other metals demand) → Smelting → takes as input (reduced with coke in a blast furnace) → Hematite
  • Tungsten → is produced by (reduced from the oxide, at a temperature few other metals demand) → Smelting → takes as input (the phosphate rock charged to the electric furnace, with coke to reduce it and silica to take up the calcium) → Apatite

These are the most distinct paths back. Tungsten can be traced through others besides.

Downstream — what it becomes

  • Tungsten → is a component of (a heavy addition that stiffens the lattice against creep) → Nickel superalloy → is used in (cast as a single crystal, because at temperature and sustained load the failure mode is creep along grain boundaries — so the boundaries are removed entirely) → Turbine blade → is associated with (the jet engine created the superalloy industry, because no existing material survived the turbine inlet — and turbine temperature has risen about 500 °C since, almost entirely on the blade) → The wartime materials programmes complete chain
  • Tungsten → is used in (the vias in the chip, and the mass in the vibration motor — the fourth of the 3TG) → Smartphone → is used in (and it is where four separate raw-material arguments meet — the 3TG conflict minerals, cobalt, the rare earths, and everything too dispersed to recover) → Electronics manufacture → is associated with (and the supply chain it produced is the deepest and most concentrated in the world economy) → The semiconductor era complete chain
  • Tungsten → is used in (the filament, and the reason the metal has an industry — nothing else stays solid at the temperature useful light requires) → Incandescent lamp → is used as (and almost all of the energy leaves as heat, which is inherent rather than a design failure and is why it was legislated away) → Lighting
  • Tungsten → is used as (the incandescent filament, chosen for melting point alone) → Lighting
  • Tungsten → is used as (in tool and high-speed steels) → Alloying
  • Tungsten → is used as (as tungsten carbide) → Abrasive

These are the most distinct paths onward. Tungsten ends up in others besides.