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. They have similar physical and chemical properties, and tend to occur together in the same mineral deposits. However, they can be further subdivided into the iridium-group platinum-group elements (IPGEs: Os, Ir, Ru) and the palladium-group platinum-group elements (PPGEs: Rh, Pt, Pd) based on their behaviour in geological systems. The three elements above the platinum group in the periodic table (iron, nickel and cobalt) are all ferromagnetic; these, together with the lanthanide element gadolinium (at temperatures below 20 °C), are the only known transition metals that display ferromagnetism near room temperature. Naturally occurring platinum and platinum-rich alloys were known by pre-Columbian Americans for many years. However, even though the metal was used by pre-Columbian peoples, the first European reference to platinum appears in 1557 in the writings of the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) as a description of a mysterious metal found in Central American mines between Darién (Panama) and Mexico ("up until now impossible to melt by any of the Spanish arts"). The name platinum is derived from the Spanish word platina “little silver", the name given to the metal by Spanish settlers in Colombia. They regarded platinum as an unwanted impurity in the silver they were mining. By 1815, rhodium and palladium had been discovered by William Hyde Wollaston, and iridium and osmium by his close friend and collaborator Smithson Tennant. The platinum metals have many useful catalytic properties.