Who discovered ruthenium and when was it isolated?
Karl Ernst Claus isolated six grams of the new metal in 1844 at Kazan State University. He extracted the element from crude platinum residues found in Russian river sands dissolved in aqua regia.
Questions about Ruthenium
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is the chemical symbol and atomic number for ruthenium?
Ruthenium has the chemical symbol Ru and occupies position 44 on the periodic table. It appears as a hard white metal with four distinct crystal modifications that do not tarnish under ambient conditions.
Where are the largest deposits of ruthenium located globally?
Most deposits exist within ores containing other platinum group metals found in the Ural Mountains. North and South America also host significant geological formations including pentlandite from Sudbury, Ontario and pyroxenite deposits in South Africa.
How much ruthenium is consumed annually for electrical applications?
Approximately 13.8 tonnes of consumed ruthenium went into electrical applications in 2016 alone. Thick-film chip resistors use ruthenium dioxide mixed with lead and bismuth ruthenates to account for half of all global consumption.
Which Nobel Prize winners utilized ruthenium compounds in their research?
Grubbs' catalysts earned their inventor a Nobel Prize for work in alkene metathesis while Ryōji Noyori won the Chemistry prize in 2001 for asymmetric hydrogenation contributions. Chiral ruthenium complexes introduced by Ryoji Noyori enable enantioselective hydrogenation of ketones, aldehydes, and imines.