Lecture

Precious Metals: Properties, Uses, and Alloys

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

In course

MSE-422: Advanced metallurgy

This course covers the metallurgy, processing and properties of modern high-performance metals and alloys (e.g. advanced steels, Ni-base, Ti-base, High Entropy Alloys etc.). In addition, the principles of computational alloy design as well as approaches fo ...

Description

This lecture covers the properties, occurrence, reserves, main producers, annual production, price, and main uses of precious metals such as ruthenium, rhodium, and osmium. It also delves into the metallurgy of gold, silver, and platinum, including alloying elements, color effects, and hallmarking standards.

Instructor

Christian Leinenbach

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Chemistry

Organic chemistry: Organometallic chemistry

Related concepts (32)

Precious metal

Precious metals are rare, naturally occurring metallic chemical elements of high economic value. Chemically, the precious metals tend to be less reactive than most elements (see noble metal). They are usually ductile and have a high lustre. Historically, precious metals were important as currency but are now regarded mainly as investment and industrial raw materials. Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium each have an ISO 4217 currency code. The best known precious metals are the coinage metals, which are gold and silver.

Osmium

Osmium () is a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76. It is a hard, brittle, bluish-white transition metal in the platinum group that is found as a trace element in alloys, mostly in platinum ores. Osmium is the densest naturally occurring element. When experimentally measured using X-ray crystallography, it has a density of 22.59g/cm3. Manufacturers use its alloys with platinum, iridium, and other platinum-group metals to make fountain pen nib tipping, electrical contacts, and in other applications that require extreme durability and hardness.

Synthesis of precious metals

The synthesis of precious metals involves the use of either nuclear reactors or particle accelerators to produce these elements. Ruthenium and rhodium are precious metals produced as a small percentage of the fission products from the nuclear fission of uranium. The longest half-lives of the radioisotopes of these elements generated by nuclear fission are 373.59 days for ruthenium and 45 days for rhodium.

Platinum group

The platinum-group metals (abbreviated as the PGMs; alternatively, the platinoids, platinides, platidises, platinum group, platinum metals, platinum family or platinum-group elements (PGEs)) are six noble, precious metallic elements clustered together in the periodic table. These elements are all transition metals in the d-block (groups 8, 9, and 10, periods 5 and 6). The six platinum-group metals are ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum.

Price

A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation expected, required, or given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the commercial exchange, the payment for this product will likely be called its "price". However, if the product is "service", there will be other possible names for this product's name.

Related lectures (64)

Basics of Supply and Demand

Explores the basics of supply and demand, analyzing profit maximization and factors influencing supply.

Precious Metals: Properties and Applications

Explores the properties, uses, and metallurgy of precious metals like gold, silver, palladium, platinum, iridium, ruthenium, rhodium, and osmium.

Market-Based Instruments: Emission Reduction Strategies

Covers market-based instruments for emission reductions and their efficiency in minimizing costs across different sources of emissions.

Precious Metals: Properties, Alloys, and Applications

Explores the metallurgy of precious metals, including silver and gold alloys, color properties, hardening mechanisms, and platinum alloys.

Advanced Optics: Light Scattering in Different Media