Plansee - Strong Metals
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PLANSEE Plansee High Performance Materials: A division of the Plansee Group

Plansee is the expert for refractory metals – in particular molybdenum and tungsten. Two very special metals that are fundamentally different from other materials. Whether in the electronics industry, coating technology or high-temperature furnaces: Wherever traditional materials are stretched beyond their limits, Plansee's alloys and composites come into their own.

Molybdenum and tungsten have exceptional heat resistance, making them dimensionally stable and extremely strong, even at high temperatures. Molybdenum has a melting point of 2,620 °C. And at 3,420 °C, tungsten has the highest melting point of all metals. Both metals have a very low vapor pressure and are particularly well suited for hightemperature applications in vacuum and protective gas atmospheres. Our metals combine excellent heat resistance with good electrical and thermal conductivity. And while some other metals such as copper are outstanding conductors, they cannot withstand high...

Plansee is already manufacturing refractory metals since 1921. The company's founder, Dr. Paul Schwarzkopf (in the foreground), started producing tungsten filaments for incandescent lamps in the Austrian town of Reutte with a team of only 15 employees. In addition to filaments, our workforce of over 2,000 employees now globally produces thousands of products from refractory metals and composite materials. We are divided into market-oriented business units. As a result, Plansee is not just the leader in terms of shipped volumes but also an applications specialist providing custom products for...

Plansee was named after the lake whose name it shares. Even then, the waters of Lake Plansee were an important energy source for the company and the presence of the lake was a decisive factor in choosing Reutte as the site.

Key components for demanding industries. The Business Unit Industries is responsible for manufacturing components and complex assemblies made of molybdenum, tungsten, niobium and tantalum, as well as from alloys containing these particularly hard-to-machine metals. From these materials, Plansee manufactures custom-made components for a range of industries. These include, for example, X-ray technologies, in which tungsten and molybdenum are used for the generation and detection of X-rays in computer tomographs (CT). As a result, our products are important components in modern diagnostic...

Sputtering targets and arc cathodes. Our customers use Plansee sputtering targets and arc cathodes to produce functional layers through PVD coating processes. The applications are as varied as the materials themselves. For example, our sputtering targets create metal layers in the thin-film transistors in TFT-LCD screens. In touch panels, they are used for the production of wiring structures to connect to the ITO sensor. For the manufacture of absorber and rear contact layers in thin-film solar cells, we also supply the right materials. These include molybdenum, molybdenum-sodium or...

BUSINESS UNIT Tungsten heavy metals. We manufacture our tungsten heavy metal alloys at Plansee Composite Materials in Germany and at Plansee Tungsten Alloys in France. They are used, among others, in the aviation and aerospace industries, medical technology, the automotive and foundry industries and in power engineering. Densimet® and Inermet® alloys have an exceptionally high density and reliably shield against X-ray and gamma radiation. They are used, for example, as shield packs and collimators in radiation equipment or are employed as balancing weights in motor vehicles and helicopters....

Switching contact systems. Plansee is the leading producer of ready-to-use switching contact systems in the power transmission and distribution industry. Thanks to their unique physical properties, our contact materials tungsten-copper (WCu) and copper-chromium (CuCr) have set new standards in the field of ultra-high-voltage and mediumvoltage applications. Tungsten carbide-silver (WCAg) convinces due to its combination of particularly high wear resistance, thermal conductivity and high resistance to arc erosion. We manufacture our metal composites at our production sites Plansee Powertech in...

Components for ion implantation. From the tiniest filament to the finished ion source. With more than 2,000 components for implanter systems, we are the world's largest second source supplier for ion implantation. This process for the manufacture of semiconductors takes place at high temperatures, in the presence of aggressive process gases and strong electromagnetic fields. Our heat-resistant components made from molybdenum, tungsten, graphite or ceramics excel due to their ideal combination of corrosion resistance, strength, excellent thermal conductivity and absolute purity. Each ion...

We manufacture our refractory metals and composite materials using powder metallurgical techniques and cover the entire production process from the ore concentrate to customer-specific components within the Plansee Group. We cooperate closely with Western ore suppliers and have long-term supply agreements. The processing of the ore to obtain the concentrates is performed in the Plansee Group by GTP and Molymet: Global Tungsten & Powders (USA) is a division of the Plansee Group and our main supplier of tungsten metal powder. Molymet (Chile) is the world's largest processor of molybdenum...

We deform sinter blocks to produce extremely resilient semi-finished products and operate the world's largest hot rolling mill for refractory metals. The density and mechanical strength of our materials increase the more they are worked. Heat treatment allows us to compensate for mechanical stresses, influence material properties and to ensure that our metals can be machined successfully. Whether it's a question of turning, milling, grinding, cutting, joining, coating, or finishing: we can perform all usual machining steps in-house. In this way, we can ensure that our customers get the very...