The tantalum and niobium hydrogenfluorides are then removed from the aqueous solution by liquid-liquid extraction using organic solvents, such as cyclohexanone or methyl isobutyl ketone.

This step allows the simple removal of various metal impurities (e.g. iron and manganese) which remain in the aqueous phase in the form of fluorides.

For these applications it can be produced by MOCVD (or related techniques), which involves the hydrolysis of its volatile halides or alkoxides: The crystal structure of tantalum pentoxide has been the matter of some debate.

[5] The structures of both polymorphs consist of chains built from octahedral TaO6 and pentagonal bipyramidal TaO7 polyhedra sharing opposite vertices; which are further joined by edge-sharing.

[8][9] A high pressure form (Z-Ta2O5) has also been reported, in which the Ta atoms adopt a 7 coordinate geometry to give a monoclinic structure (space group C2).

Like many metal oxides Ta2O5 is an insulator and its band gap has variously been reported as being between 3.8 and 5.3 eV, depending on the method of manufacture.

[28] Ta2O5 has also been found to have a high nonlinear refractive index,[29][30] on the order of three times that of silicon nitiride, which has led to interest in the utilization of Ta2O5 in photonic integrated circuits.

Ta2O5 has been recently utilized as the material platform for the generation of supercontinuum[31][32] and Kerr frequency combs[30] in waveguides and optical ring resonators.

Through the addition of rare-earth dopants in the deposition process, Ta2O5 waveguide lasers have been presented for a variety of applications, such as remote sensing and LiDAR.