Tantalum is mainly used in electronics, computers, medical devices, automotive electronics, high-temperature furnace construction, vacuum furnaces, superconductor technology, thin-film technology, missile parts as well as aerospace, metallurgical, chemical processing and pharmaceutical, mechanical, aviation and nuclear industries.

At present, about half the tantalum are consumed within the electronics industry due to the rapidly growing consumer electronics market, mainly as powder and wire for capacitors. Capacitor grade tantalum in the form of powder is used as the anode material in commercial manufacture of tantalum capacitors, which are very small in size relative to their capacity. Because of this size and weight advantage, major end uses for tantalum capacitors include mobile communication devices, laptops, pagers and automotive electronics.

Tantalum nano-powders offer large specific surface areas and are particularly suitable for ultra-high capacitance tantalum capacitors for light and small high value electrical devices such as laptops, PDA's, iPods, iPads, MP3 and DS's etc.

Applications of metallurgical grade tantalum include liners in chemical reaction vessels and processing equipment (corrosion resistance to both acids and alkalines), components in jet engines including turbine blades (creep resistance), alloy additives, bio-technology (bio-stability), sputtering targets onto semiconductor substrates for magnetic storage media, inkjet printer heads and flat panel displays, nuclear reactors, aircraft parts and other industries above.

Other applications of tantalum requiring strength, ductility, toughness, corrosion resistance, thermal conductivity and high melting point are as follows:

• Ballistics,
• Surgical implants and closures,
• Cemented carbides for cutting tools and
• Tantalum compounds for optical applications and sonic acoustic wave filters.