The 28th annual Santa Fe Symposium® was held from 18th–21st May 2014 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and attracted another large attendance of delegates from 15 countries worldwide, representing a good cross-section of those involved in jewellery manufacturing from mass manufacture to specialised craft operations. In general, many were finding the market is tougher now than a few years...

Platinum-20% rhodium strengthened by oxides of zirconium and yttrium were prepared by solidification of platinum-rhodium-(zirconium)-yttrium powder which had been internally oxidised. After forging, rolling and annealing, 1 mm plates were obtained. Then the plates were mechanically ground to 50–70 μm from rolling-normal direction, followed by argon ion milling until a hole appeared on the centre of the foil to obtain samples which were characterised by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), combined with thermodynamic analysis. The existence of spherical ZrO₂ and Y₂O₃ particles was verified with platinum and rhodium present as pure metals at the same time. It was found that the deformation behaviour of ZrO₂ and Y₂O₃ particles was quite different during processing, where the former basically maintain their spherical shape and were bonded tightly to matrix, while the latter were compressed along normal direction and form two cracks on both sides of Y₂O₃ particles along the rolling direction. The differences in hardness and interface bonding properties of these two types of particles are supposed to be the main causes of different deformation behaviour during hot forging and cold rolling.

The thermodynamic properties were reviewed by the author in 1995. A new assessment of the enthalpy of fusion at 68.0 ± 1.7 kJ mol⁻¹ leads to a revision of the thermodynamic properties of the liquid phase and although the enthalpy of sublimation at 298.15 K is retained as 788 ± 4 kJ mol⁻¹ the normal boiling point is revised to 5565 K at one atmosphere pressure.

Deformation and fracture behaviour of cold drawing iridium wire under tension at room temperature is examined. High purity polycrystalline iridium was manufactured using pyrometallurgical technology. During the initial stage of cold rolling, iridium wire has its usual grain structure and exhibits brittle deformation behaviour: poor plasticity and brittle transgranular fracture (BTF). However, the wire begins demonstrating high plasticity including necking in spite of the brittle fracture mode when the lamellar structure has been formed in iridium during cold drawing.