Cadmium in the context of "Group 12 element"

Electronic waste (or e-waste) describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. It is also commonly known as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) or end-of-life (EOL) electronics. Used electronics which are destined for refurbishment, reuse, resale, salvage recycling through material recovery, or disposal are also considered e-waste. Informal processing of e-waste in developing countries can lead to adverse human health effects and environmental pollution. The growing consumption of electronic goods due to the Digital Revolution and innovations in science and technology, such as bitcoin, has led to a global e-waste problem and hazard. The rapid exponential increase of e-waste is due to frequent new model releases and unnecessary purchases of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), short innovation cycles and low recycling rates, and a drop in the average life span of computers.

Electronic scrap components, such as CPUs, contain potentially harmful materials such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, or brominated flame retardants. Recycling and disposal of e-waste may involve significant risk to the health of workers and their communities.

A native metal is any metal that is found pure in its metallic form in nature. Metals that can be found as native deposits singly or in alloys include antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, indium, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, rhenium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, and zinc, as well as the gold group (gold, copper, lead, aluminium, mercury, silver) and the platinum group (platinum, iridium, osmium, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium). Among the alloys found in native state have been brass, bronze, pewter, German silver, osmiridium, electrum, white gold, silver-mercury amalgam, and gold-mercury amalgam.

Only gold, silver, copper and the platinum group occur native in large amounts. Over geological time scales, very few metals can resist natural weathering processes like oxidation, so mainly the less reactive metals such as gold and platinum are found as native metals. The others usually occur as isolated pockets where a natural chemical process reduces a common compound or ore of the metal, leaving the pure metal behind as small flakes or inclusions.

The metallic elements in the periodic table located between the transition metals to their left and the chemically weak nonmetallic metalloids to their right have received many names in the literature, such as post-transition metals, poor metals, other metals, p-block metals, basic metals, and chemically weak metals. The most common name, post-transition metals, is generally used in this article.

Physically, these metals are soft (or brittle), have poor mechanical strength, and usually have melting points lower than those of the transition metals. Being close to the metal-nonmetal border, their crystalline structures tend to show covalent or directional bonding effects, having generally greater complexity or fewer nearest neighbours than other metallic elements.

In industrial chemistry, a stabilizer or stabiliser is a chemical that is used to prevent degradation. Above all, heat and light stabilizers are added to plastic and rubber materials because they ensure safe processing and protect products against aging and weathering. In particular polyvinyl chloride would not be possible without stabilizers (PVC is one of the most important plastics and used for pipes, window frames and many other products).

In economic terms the most important product groups on the market for stabilizers are compounds based on calcium (calcium-zinc and organo-calcium), lead, and tin stabilizers as well as liquid and light stabilizers (HALS, benzophenone, benzotriazole). Cadmium-based stabilizers largely vanished in the last years due to health and environmental concerns. In 2023, almost half of all polymer stabilizers sold worldwide were based on calcium.

Dark chocolate, also known as plain chocolate and black chocolate, is a form of chocolate made from cocoa solids, cocoa butter and sugar. It has a higher cocoa percentage than white chocolate and milk chocolate. Dark chocolate is valued for its health benefits, and for its reputation as a sophisticated choice of chocolate. Like milk and white chocolate, dark chocolate is used to make chocolate bars and to coat confectionery.

Dark chocolate gained much of its reputation in the late 20th century, as French chocolatiers worked to establish dark chocolate as preferred over milk chocolate in the French national palate. As this preference was exported to countries such as the United States, associated values of terroir, bean-to-bar chocolate making and gourmet chocolate followed. Because of the high cocoa percentage, dark chocolate can contain particularly high amounts of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium.

Jacques Babinet (French: [babinɛ]; 5 March 1794 – 21 October 1872) was a French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who is best known for his contributions to optics.

Among Babinet's accomplishments are the 1827 standardization of the angstrom unit for measuring light using the red cadmium line's wavelength, and Babinet's principle that similar diffraction patterns are produced by two complementary screens. He was the first to suggest using wavelengths of light to standardize measurements. His idea was first used between 1960 and 1983, when a meter was defined as a wavelength of light from krypton gas.

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) is a stable crystalline compound formed from cadmium and tellurium. It is mainly used as the semiconducting material in cadmium telluride photovoltaics and an infrared optical window. It is usually sandwiched with cadmium sulfide to form a p–n junction solar PV cell.