Tungsten

Description

The highest melting point of any metal — 3,422 degrees C — and the filament of the incandescent age.

Physical Properties

Atomic Properties

Discovery & History

Scheele and tungstic acid (1781)

In 1781 the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele showed that the mineral then called tungsten (Swedish for "heavy stone", now named scheelite) contained a new acid, which he named tungstic acid. Torbern Bergman suggested that a new metal could be obtained from it, but neither man isolated it.

The Elhuyar brothers isolate the metal (1783)

In 1783 the Spanish brothers Juan José and Fausto Elhuyar, working at the Royal Seminary of Bergara in the Basque Country, found the same acid in the mineral wolframite and reduced it with charcoal, obtaining the metal for the first time. This is the discovery year shown on this page.

Two names

The Elhuyar brothers called the metal wolfram, after wolframite, and that name is still used in German and several other languages. English and French adopted tungsten. IUPAC uses the name tungsten with the symbol W, from wolfram.

Ductile tungsten (1906 to 1910)

Tungsten is brittle at room temperature, so the first tungsten lamp filaments were pressed from powder and fragile. Between 1906 and 1910 William Coolidge at General Electric developed a powder metallurgy process to make ductile tungsten wire, which became the standard filament of incandescent lamps.

Isotopes

Data: IAEA Nuclear Data Section, LiveChart of Nuclides, ground-state evaluations, retrieved October 10, 2026. Abundance is the share of atoms in the natural element; a dash means the isotope has no standard natural abundance.

Applications & Uses

Cemented carbides

The largest use of tungsten is tungsten carbide (WC), a very hard ceramic. Grains of the carbide bonded with cobalt form cemented carbide, used for cutting tools, drill bits, mining and tunneling tools, and wear parts. The USGS estimates that cemented carbides account for about 60% of the tungsten consumed in the United States.

Alloys and heavy metal parts

Steels and superalloys: tungsten raises the hardness and heat resistance of high-speed tool steels and of some nickel and cobalt superalloys.

Heavy alloys: tungsten mixed with nickel, iron or copper makes dense parts for counterweights, vibration dampers, radiation shielding and armor-piercing projectiles.

High-temperature and electrical uses

Lighting: tungsten wire was the filament of incandescent and halogen lamps. LED lamps have largely replaced them, but tungsten filaments remain in some specialty lamps.

X-ray tubes: the target that electrons strike to produce X-rays in medical and industrial machines is usually tungsten or a tungsten alloy.

Welding and contacts: TIG welding uses tungsten electrodes, and electrical contacts use tungsten because it resists erosion by electric arcs.

Electronics: chip makers deposit tungsten from tungsten hexafluoride gas to form the tiny metal plugs that connect the layers of integrated circuits.

Fusion research: tungsten lines the divertor of the ITER fusion reactor, the part that takes the heaviest heat load from the plasma.

Abundance