Precious Metals | Titanium Jewelry

Titanium Jewellery

Source: Australia, Canada, Norway, South Africa, Ukraine

Titanium jewelry, rings, and bracelets have a distinctive, dark and warm color that sets it apart from other 'white" metals. Titanium is the ninth most abundant element to be found within the Earth's crust, and it is present in most igneous rocks or in the sediments that have eroded from them. Titanium is a difficult metal to extract from the host ore, occurring primarily in iron ores and in minerals such as anatase, brookite, ilmenite, perovskite, rutile, and titanite.

Titanium was first discovered in England by Rev. William Gregor in 1791. This element was independently rediscovered several years later by a German chemist named Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Klaproth confirmed titanium as a new element and in 1795, naming it after the Latin word for "Earth" or Titans and for the name "Titans" of Greek mythology fame.

Titanium is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol (Ti) and an atomic number 22. It is a light, strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant metal with a silver/white metallic color. Titanium is used in strong light-weight alloys. Titanium has a high level of resistance to corrosion and is almost as resistant to corrosion as platinum.

Titanium's properties are chemically and physically similar to zirconium. The metal has always been difficult to extract from its various ore components. Pure metallic titanium (99.9%) was first prepared in 1910 by Matthew A. Hunter.

Titanium metal was not used outside the laboratory until 1946 when William Justin Kroll proved that titanium could be commercially produced by reducing titanium tetrachloride with magnesium. This extraction and production process is known as the Kroll process and is the method still used today in the manufacturing of titanium jewelry.

Titanium is a hard metal which has a hardness of 6.0 on the Mohs scale, with a Vickers Hardness (VHN or HV) of between 200 and 250.

Chemical composition: TiCl₄

Atomic Number: 22