The Ruthenium price surge end of 2017

About 10 years ago the ruthenium metal price was very volatile (see Historical Ruthenium price below) due to multiple reasons and price speculation, for example:

• Ruthenium use in magnetic hard drive disks
• Ruthenium use in chemical catalysis
• potetntial use in semiconductor memory devices (DRAM)

The the price spiked again 2009/2010 but did then settle at a relatively low baseline until autumn last year (see 2017 Ruthenium Price below).

With the exception of Platinum, other noble metals did also surge in 2017, however earlier in the year compared to ruthenium:

• Platinum - flat 900 to 1000 USD/ozt. rang
• Palladium - upward drift 800 to 1100 USD/ozt.
• Rhodium - surge 1000 to 1750 USD/ozt.
• Iridium - surge 700 to 980 USD/ozt.

Besides new potential application in the interconnects semiconductor logic and memory devices the sited industrial applications (LINK) are the same as for 10 years ago, namely:

• Ruthenium use in magnetic hard drive disks
• Ruthenium use in chemical catalysis
• potential use in semiconductor devices

And a new one:

• China, presumably vacuum cleaning the earth for scares materials etc.

Upcoming blogs will cover these applications as well as emerging ones in more details one by one - stay tuned.