How to Use hafnium in a Sentence

hafnium

noun
  • This turned out to be a layer of hafnium oxynitride just eight atoms thick.
    — Daniel Oberhaus, WIRED, 11 July 2019
  • The team tested the method using gold, tantalum, and natural hafnium samples.
    — Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 28 May 2026
  • While gold and tantalum served as simpler baseline materials, hafnium posed a far greater challenge.
    — Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 28 May 2026
  • In between the blocks, the researchers placed a seven-nanometer layer of a mix of titanium oxide and hafnium oxide.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2018
  • At this point, the whole device is covered with a thin layer of hafnium oxide, an insulator that provided a bit of space between the gate and the rest of the hardware.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 10 Mar. 2022
  • One radioactive isotope of the element hafnium prefers to stay in silicate minerals, such as those in Earth's mantle.
    — Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Scientific American, 1 Dec. 2016
  • The team built the memristor using tungsten as the top electrode, hafnium oxide ceramic as the middle layer, and graphene as the bottom electrode.
    — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 1 Apr. 2026
  • But today who needs to know the capital of South Dakota or the atomic number of hafnium (Pierre and 72)?
    — Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 16 Nov. 2020
  • Glenn is developing an alloy of nickel, titanium and hafnium to manipulate flaps, winglets, rudders and other parts in air and space.
    — Grant Segall, cleveland.com, 8 Dec. 2017
  • To avoid this issue, Barfod and her colleagues decided to look into the relative ratios of isotopes of the element hafnium.
    — Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Aug. 2020
  • What Spencer and his colleagues found is that oxygen isotopes as well as the pair of hafnium and lutetium isotopes begin to correlate in magma formed after the explosion of land plants.
    — Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 19 Sep. 2022
  • Any hafnium stays happily in the mantle and keeps on decaying into tungsten, which then remains in the silicate mantle if no further core formation occurs.
    — Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Scientific American, 1 Dec. 2016
  • Before plants, there was no connection between the oxygen and hafnium-lutetium composition of zircon because they were both being set in the Earth's mantle when the magma formed.
    — Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 19 Sep. 2022
  • It’s constructed from alternating thin films of hafnium oxide (HfO2) and glass sitting on top of a silver reflective layer.
    — Sid Assawaworrarit, IEEE Spectrum, 25 Nov. 2023
  • Under normal circumstances, the titanium/hafnium oxide layer would act like an insulator and block current flow at the intersection of the copper wires.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2018
  • One notable example was the discovery of three particularly rare elements found — hafnium, uranium and tungsten.
    — Fox News, 1 Aug. 2019
  • Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a high-performance memristor using a specialized hafnium oxide.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 20 Mar. 2026
  • Per the paper, the analysis determined that ratios of hafnium isotopes can be used to differentiate Alexandrian glass from Levantine glass decolorized with manganese.
    — Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Aug. 2020
  • So Raman and electrical engineering professor Shanhui Fan made panels containing layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium oxide on top of a thin layer of silver.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Raman’s radiator — dubbed the photonic radiative cooler — is constructed with seven alternating layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium oxide placed on a reflective base layer of silver.
    — Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 3 Dec. 2014
  • Our experiment uses hafnium monofluoride molecules because hafnium, with 72 protons in its nucleus, is one of the heaviest metals in the periodic table that isn't radioactive.
    — Luke Caldwell, Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2024
  • Hafnium is especially interesting, as semiconductor manufacturers have been using hafnium oxide as an insulator in their transistors.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 19 Oct. 2017
  • The firm's Rare Metals division produces, reclaims, refines, and markets high-value niche metals and compounds that include gallium, indium, rhenium, tantalum, niobium, and hafnium.
    — Moneyshow, Forbes, 19 Mar. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hafnium.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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