Nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with the symbol. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile.

Silvery white, tough, and harder than iron, nickel is widely familiar because of its use in coinage but is more important either as the pure metal or in the form of alloys for its many domestic and industrial applications. Nickel has high electrical and thermal conductivity.

Nickel compounds are used in batteries – increasingly so in the powerful batteries used in electric vehicles.

Nickel is mainly used to make stainless steel: it adds strength and corrosion resistance to the steel, and is also used in types of steel designed to be less magnetic. It is also used for nickel plating.

With its ability to handle high temperatures, nickel features in specialty steels and superalloys, used for example in jet engines.