Platinum Metals Review - Volume 28, Issue 4, 1984

At the annual meeting of the Royal Society of Chemistry, held earlier in the year at Exeter University, Dr. Acres, Director of Research, Johnson Matthey, gave some predictions about platinum group metal catalysed reactions in the year 2000. This article is based upon his lecture.

The technique for compressing macroscopic volumes of hydrogen to record pressures of tens of kilobars, developed in the Institute of Solid State Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, has permitted the first syntheses of the hydrides of a number of metals namely: manganese, iron, cobalt, molybdenum, technetium, rhenium and gold. This paper presents the results of the application of the technique for the hydrogenation of the platinum metals. The data obtained on hydrogen solubility at high pressures are used to estimate its equilibrium solubility at atmospheric pressure.

Following a successful meeting held in Bristol in 1981, the second international conference to deal entirely with the chemistry of the platinum group metals was held at the University of Edinburgh in July 1984, sponsored by the Dalton Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The conference attracted over three hundred participants from both academic and industrial organisations in twenty three countries. There were twenty seven lectures, and in excess of one hundred posters presented during the week. The lectures are summarised here, while a book containing abstracts of the posters only is available from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The stability of platinum was well known, and the light sensitivity of some of its salts had been studied, long before a practical photographic process was available. Early photographic prints based upon silver salts lacked permanence, however, so alternatives were sought and eventually a much improved process using platinum was evolved. These platinotype prints became very popular around the turn of this century but the non-availability of platinum for this application during the First World War resulted in the virtual disappearance of the process from commercial photography. This article considers some of the work and just a few of the many people who contributed to the success of the platinum printing process which, fortunately, is still practised by a small number of creative enthusiasts.