Platinum Metals Review - Volume 23, Issue 2, 1979

Last October the 11th Swedish Symposium on Catalysis was held at Lund University on the theme of “Precious Metals as Catalysts, and Possible Alternatives”. In an invited lecture the author explored the origins of the catalytic activity of the platinum group metals and, although dismissing the possibility of complete imitation, speculated on ways in which their electron densities might be slightly but advantageously modified. The following article is a summary of his lecture.

The First International Symposium on Homogeneous Catalysis was held in December last in Corpus Christi, Texas, one of the petrochemical centres of the United States of America. This review presents only a brief account of the conference and concentrates on the contributions that particularly concerned the platinum metals.

The microstructure and some physical and chemical properties of the platinum group metals iridium, rhodium, ruthenium and osmium, prepared by electron-beam melting, have been investigated and the results are reviewed in this article. The degree of anisotropy of these properties has been evaluated and high plasticity has been demonstrated for single crystals of the refractory platinum group metals.