Method for producing tantalum powder and tantalum powder obtained by the method

A method for producing tantalum powder, the method comprising the steps of:

• (1) uniformly mixing a tantalum powder raw material, metal magnesium and at least one alkali metal halide and/or alkaline earth metal halide, loading the mixture into a container, and putting the container in a heating furnace;
• (2) raising the temperature of the heating furnace to 600-1200° C. in the presence of an inert gas, and soaking the mixture;
• (3) at the end of soaking, lowering the temperature of the heating furnace to 600-800° C., vacuumizing an interior of the heating furnace to 10 Pa or less, and soaking under a negative pressure so that unreacted metal magnesium is separated;
• (4) thereafter, raising the temperature of the heating furnace to 750-1200° C. in the presence of an inert gas, and soaking to melt the alkali metal halide and/or alkaline earth metal halide and obtain a molten salt, so that the tantalum powder is sintered in the molten salt after oxygen reduction, wherein the inert gas in step (4) is the same as or different from the inert gas in step (2);
• (5) then cooling to room temperature and passivating to obtain a mixed material containing the alkali metal halide and/or alkaline earth metal halide and the tantalum powder;
• and
• (6) separating the tantalum powder from the resulting mixture.