The Magic Metal—Molybdenum（4）

Molybdenum is a kind of rare metal, also，it is one of the important strategic non-renewable resources and the basic material of development of high and new technology, national modernization and the construction of modern defense. With the continuous development of science and technology, molybdenum is widely used in steel industry, non-ferrous metal industry, nuclear industry, aerospace industry, chemical industry, electronic industry and other fields because of its unique performance. At the same time, various emerging applications of molybdenum was constantly found which made this magical molybdenum metal more colorful.

The application of molybdenum in the field of agriculture

The amount of molybdenum in agriculture is very small, which is mainly added to the fertilizer in the form of molybdate salt. Trace amounts of molybdenum can stimulate the growth of plant, and it participates in the nitrogen metabolism of plants. Also, it is the major constituents of nitrogenase, so that the leguminous plants have special needs for molybdenum. Test confirmed that the molybdenum fertilizer on soybean, leguminous crops (such as peanuts, beans, mung beans) and green manure crops (such as clover, alfalfa, Chinese trumpet creeper, rice) has obvious effect on production improvement. In addition, molybdenum still can be used in the processing of legume seeds to prevent diseases and pests of seeds.

Military material

Molybdenum can be used as a pack of explosive warhead lining type (medicine cover in military), and the warhead can cut and penetrate deep depth in military and industrial applications. The explosive around the lining detonates in a controlled way to distort the lining in a very strange way in this type of device. Deformation provided the lining material with rod fragments (spray) of a very high speed and great tension that can penetrate the target or goal deeply.

It is a new research field to develop the medicine cover of molybdenum lining and it will be an important reform that the copper is replaced by molybdenum on the armory. The medicine lining material of conventional warhead is copper, but the velocity of molybdenum is 5.12 km/s (copper is 3.94 km/s), the density of molybdenum is 10.2 g/cm3 (copper is 8.93 g/cm3). In order to obtain the coherent jet, the point of warhead must have high speed of sound. The injection point speed of medicine design with molybdenum is greater than 12 km/s, while that with copper is less than 10 km/s. The difference of the speed is between 20% ~ 25%, the reason of which lies in that the high speed of sound make increased energy so that the penetration increased.

Other applications

MoN film is a good gate electrode material and door components of integrated circuits, and the thin film of molybdenum copper alloy can meet the requirements of super scale integrated circuit. MoNx, Mo5N6 and Co-Mo alloy film have magnetism performance that can be used as a record in the computer, storage, transmission, display and other components. Molybdenum also plays part in the superconducting thin films, low impedance connection and other electronic semiconductor devices.

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