Mass-production of almost-pure copper by Mitsubishi Materials.(Metals and alloys)

Mitsubishi Materials Corp has developed the technology to process copper ore into so-called "7N" copper that is 99.9999999% pure. (The metal's name comes from the fact that its purity value has seven 9s after the decimal point.)

The company plans to produce 10 tons of ultra-pure copper ingots a month from January 2004, in the first production of 7N copper anywhere in the world.

The company produced the metal by successfully removing almost all the impurities from the copper ore, such as silver and sulphur, by performing electrolysis smelting twice, company s