Nickel

Description

Nickel is a hard, silvery-white metal whose strength, ductility and resistance to heat and corrosion make it extremely useful for the development of a wide variety of materials — from wires to coins to military equipment. Nickel is a fairly good conductor of electricity and heat and is one of only four elements (cobalt, iron, nickel and gadolinium) that are ferromagnetic (magnetized easily) at room temperature. Nickel is a transition metal, meaning it has valence electrons in two shells instead of one, allowing it to form several different oxidation states.  Nickel can be fabricated readily by the use of standard hot and cold working methods. Nickel reacts only slowly with fluorine, eventually developing a protective coating of the fluoride, and therefore is used as the pure metal or in the form of alloys such as Monel in equipment for handling fluorine gas and corrosive fluorides. Nickel is ferromagnetic at ordinary temperatures, although not as strongly as iron, and is less electropositive than iron but dissolves readily in dilute mineral acids.

China is the world’s largest nickel producer. Other major nickel-producing countries include Russia, Japan, Australia, and Canada.