Nitrogen-containing metal powder, production process thereof, and porous sintered body and solid electrolytic capacitor using the metal powder

Abstract

An object of the present invention is to provide nitrogen-containing metallic powder at high productivity, which powder contains a metal such as niobium or tantalum containing nitrogen uniformly, and enables production of an anode electrode that has high specific capacitance and low leakage current and that exhibits excellent reliability for a prolonged period of time. There is provided nitrogen-containing metallic powder which is a solid solution containing 50–20,000 ppm nitrogen, in which the metal that constitutes the metallic powder is niobium or tantalum. The nitrogen-containing metallic powder is produced through the process in which while a metallic compound is reduced with a reducing agent, a nitrogen-containing gas is introduced into a reaction system to thereby form metal, and nitrogen is simultaneously incorporated into metal. A porous sintered body comprising the nitrogen-containing metallic powder and a solid electrolytic capacitor comprising the powder have low leakage current and exhibit excellent reliability for a prolonged period of time.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.