• Niobium is an expensive element to incorporate into commercial production, but it's often worth the price.Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Niobium (Nb) is a rare metal mined primarily in Brazil and Canada. It is also known as columbium, which is the name its discoverer, Charles Hatchett, gave it in 1801. Although the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry formally changed the element's name to niobium in 1950, the earlier name remains common in North America.
  
  

Steel Production

• Niobium is a common additive in steel production, because it improves the strength of steel and makes it easier to work with. According to the Brazil-based Companhia Brasileira de Metalurgia e Mineração (CBMM), adding niobium to steel "improves its weldability, which is particularly useful." Since welding is a prominent method of manipulating and joining steel, improved weldability translates into enticing economic savings when marketing niobium-enhanced steel.
  
  

Superconducting Magnets

• When cooled to cryogenic (extremely cold) temperatures, some substances become superconductive, which means they have precisely zero electrical resistance. Niobium-tin becomes superconductive at temperatures below 18 Kelvin (-255 degrees Celsius), and can withstand extremely high magnetic field strengths. This makes it useful in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners and particle accelerators. However, its brittleness makes it difficult and expensive to wind into coils. Therefore, the more versatile niobium-titanium is the most common material used in superconducting magnets as of 2010.
  
  

Capacitors

• In certain capacitor designs, niobium oxide functions as a dielectric (i.e., a poorly conductive material that separates the charged plates of the capacitor). A material-specific dielectric constant (k) quantifies the amount of charge a dielectric can "hold back." The higher the constant, the more charge it takes to overcome the dielectric. Thus, capacitors with higher dielectrics can store larger amounts of charge. Niobium oxide has a high dielectric constant of 41. By comparison, air has a dielectric constant of 1.