That seems to be the main use of tantalum in electronics. They allow you to make very low loss, very high quality, small, capacitors - which is difficult to do with normal silicon IC processing.

Tantalum is a "refractory" metal - it has a very high melting point. It's often used in vacuum chambers for heating elements for furnaces and the like. Its oxide is also being investigated for use in things like high density RAM (because its dielectric constant is much higher than SiO2's).

More [link|http://ugandagold.com/tant-back.html|here].

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Scott.