Platinum Metals Review - Volume 28, Issue 2, 1984

A detailed study of future electric vehicle developments has identified an opportunity to use city buses and delivery lorries as a first market for fuel cell traction powerplants. Suitable cells employing a platinum metal catalyst on the electrodes have been developed and a substantial production facility has been set up. Trials with a mobile test bed are continuing and it is anticipated that rapid commercialisation will follow once the system has been fully demonstrated.

The recent development of potential cycling procedures for producing relatively thick hydrous noble metal oxide layers, plus the introduction of sputtering techniques for laying down such films on other substrates such as conducting glass, has added an important new dimension to the study of noble metal oxidation. Differences in composition, apparent density and redox behaviour between the hydrous and anhydrous layers are discussed here with particular reference to the iridium oxide system. Commercial applications that may result from its electrochromic activity are also considered.

Continuing investigation of superconductivity, particularly of platinum metal compounds, has resulted in a growing understanding of the phenomenon. Accumulating data contain some remarkable experimental results which in time must surely find both theoretical explanation and industrial application.

The great interest being taken in the organometallic compounds of the platinum metals is evident in the current literature, in the first International Conference on the Chemistry of the Platinum Group Metals held in Bristol in 1981, and now by the second conference to take place in Edinburgh in July. This article reviews the preparation of the first such compounds over a hundred and fifty years ago and the acrimonious debate that ensued over their true constitution, continuing with a brief account of the early development of a further range of platinum complexes that have come to play an important part in industrial chemistry.