I don’t know what other people out there think but I have this nagging grievance with Platinum Group Metals- PGMs. They’re too expensive. I receive a weekly newsletter from BASF Catalysts listing prices of the various precious metals. Some of them have taken an astounding uptick in price in the last year.
As of last friday, ruthenium was at $375 per troy oz. Rhodium continues to be in the stratosphere at $4925. Platinum is down a bit at $1159. Pt prices are greatly affected by demand in Asia for Pt jewelry, according to the newsletter. Osmium and iridium have been at $400 per troy oz for quite a long time. Gold was at $650.50 and even silver was a lustrous $14.07 per troy oz. Palladium is at $328.
Don’t get me wrong. PGM catalysts are fantastic in almost every way. I’m not so cold hearted that tears don’t well up at the sight of an X-ray of some resplendent Rhodium complex proudly thrusting its phosphines about. My god it is beautiful. How could I be against PGMs? My post-doc was doing rhodium chemistry.
It’s just that they’ve gotten so darned EXPENSIVE. Price out some rhodium (II) acetate sometime, but try to be sitting down. The price volatility is not the fault of companies like BASF or Matthey. There is just a deficiency in supply. These metals are traded in the world market place. BASF and Matthey are venerable and upstanding companies. I have no beef with them.
But, here is what we need. We industrial folk need to try harder to implement transformations catalyzed by the other metals- Ti, Zr, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, or zeolites, etc. Part of the problem is familiarity. All of the important textbooks on organometallic chemistry, advanced synthesis, etc., cover the mechanisms of catalytic transformations, but they highlight the PGM mechanisms. That’s not a bad thing, but we all get out of grad school with “palladium on the brain”.
Yes, of course, there are some things that will probably always be done with PGMs. But what about the beautiful coupling chemistry using Grignards by Furstner, Kambe, or Knochel?
Take a walk on the wild side. Try something different.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Anything involving d electrons is a little wild for me! That said, palladium is magic.
Palladium is Magic. In grad school my course in Organometallic Chemistry was taught by Lou Hegedus (at Colorado State University). In the 1980’s CSU was a Mecca for organometallic chemistry. We had John Stille, Lou Hegedus, and Jack Norton in our department. They used to have seminars called “The Norgedille Seminars”. Hegedus really dug palladium. He used to refer to the process of coordination as “sitting down on the metal”. Hegedus is a great guy and one of the true human beings in chemistry. They’re not all like that.
John Stille was killed on the flight from Denver to Chicago that crashed in Sioux City, Iowa. Stille was a real character. I’ll never forget a particular Halloween party where he arrived as an Italian Priest- He looked like father Guido Sarducci.