Forms of Beryllium

The three primary forms of beryllium produced are beryllium-containing alloys, pure beryllium metal and beryllia ceramics, also known as beryllium oxide ceramic.

Beryllium-containing Alloys

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Beryllium

Beryllium ( /bəˈrɪliəm/ bə-RIL-ee-əm) is the chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4

A divalent element, beryllium is found naturally only combined with other elements in minerals.

Notable gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl (aquamarine, emerald) and chrysoberyl. The free element is a steel-gray, strong, lightweight brittle alkaline earth metal.

It is primarily used as a hardening agent in alloys, notably beryllium copper. Structurally, beryllium's very low density (1.85 times that of water), high melting point (1287 °C), high temperature stability and low coefficient of thermal expansion, make it in many ways an ideal aerospace material, and it has been used in rocket nozzles and is a significant component of planned space telescopes. Because of its relatively high transparency to X-rays and other forms of ionizing radiation, beryllium also has a number of uses as filters and windows for radiation and particle physics experiments.

Commercial use of beryllium metal presents technical challenges due to the toxicity (especially by inhalation) of beryllium-containing dusts. Beryllium produces a direct corrosive effect to tissue, and can cause a chronic life-threatening allergic disease called berylliosis in susceptible persons.

Beryllium has one of the highest melting points of the light metals. It has exceptional flexural rigidity (Young's modulus 287 GPa). The modulus of elasticity of beryllium is approximately 50% greater than that of steel. The combination of this modulus plus beryllium's relatively low density gives it an unusually fast sound conduction speed at standard conditions (about 12.9 km/s). Other significant properties are the high values for specific heat (1925 J·kg−1·K−1) and thermal conductivity (216 W·m−1·K−1), which make beryllium the metal with the best heat dissipation characteristics per unit weight. In combination with the relatively low coefficient of linear thermal expansion (11.4 × 10−6 K−1), these characteristics mean that beryllium demonstrates a unique degree of dimensional stability under conditions of thermal loading.[5]

The beryllium concentration of the Earth's surface rocks is ca. 4–6 ppm. Beryllium is a constituent of about 100 out of about 4000 known minerals, the most important of which are bertrandite (Be4Si2O7(OH)2), beryl (Al2Be3Si6O18), chrysoberyl (Al2BeO4) and phenakite (Be2SiO4). Precious forms of beryl are aquamarine, bixbite and emerald.[5][15][16

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