Palladium

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Chemical elements

46 rhodium ← palladium → silver Ni ↑ Pd ↓ Pt Periodic Table - Extended Periodic Table
General
Name, Symbol, Number	palladium, Pd, 46
Chemical series	transition metals
Group, Period, Block	10, 5, d
Appearance	silvery white metallic
Atomic mass	106.42 (1) g/mol
Electron configuration	[Kr] 4d10
Electrons per shell	2, 8, 18, 18, 0
Physical properties
Phase	solid
Density (near r.t.)	12.023 g·cm−3
Liquid density at m.p.	10.38 g·cm−3
Melting point	1828.05  K (1554.9 ° C, 2830.82 ° F)
Boiling point	3236 K (2963 ° C, 5365 ° F)
Heat of fusion	16.74 kJ·mol−1
Heat of vaporization	362 kJ·mol−1
Heat capacity	(25 °C) 25.98 J·mol−1·K−1
Vapor pressure P/Pa 1 10 100 1 k 10 k 100 k at T/K 1721 1897 2117 2395 2753 3234
Atomic properties
Crystal structure	cubic face centered
Oxidation states	±1 (mildly basic oxide)
Electronegativity	2.20 (Pauling scale)
Ionization energies	1st: 804.4 kJ/mol
	2nd: 1870 kJ/mol
	3rd: 3177 kJ/mol
Atomic radius	140 pm
Atomic radius (calc.)	169 pm
Covalent radius	131 pm
Van der Waals radius	163 pm
Miscellaneous
Magnetic ordering	no data
Electrical resistivity	(20 °C) 105.4 nΩ·m
Thermal conductivity	(300 K) 71.8 W·m−1·K−1
Thermal expansion	(25 °C) 11.8 µm·m−1·K−1
Speed of sound (thin rod)	(20 °C) 3070 m/s
Young's modulus	121 GPa
Shear modulus	44 GPa
Bulk modulus	180 GPa
Poisson ratio	0.39
Mohs hardness	4.75
Vickers hardness	461 MPa
Brinell hardness	37.3 MPa
CAS registry number	7440-05-3
Selected isotopes
Main article: Isotopes of palladium iso NA half-life DM DE ( MeV) DP 100Pd syn 3.63 d ε - 107Rh γ 0.084, 0.074, 0.126 - 102Pd 1.02% Pd is stable with 56 neutrons 103Pd syn 16.991 d ε - 103Rh 104Pd 11.14% Pd is stable with 58 neutrons 105Pd 22.33% Pd is stable with 59 neutrons 106Pd 27.33% Pd is stable with 60 neutrons 107Pd syn 6.5×106 y β- 0.033 107Ag 108Pd 26.46% Pd is stable with 62 neutrons 110Pd 11.72% Pd is stable with 64 neutrons
References

Palladium ( IPA: /pəˈleɪdiəm/) is a chemical element with symbol Pd and atomic number 46. A rare silver-white transition metal of the platinum group, palladium resembles platinum chemically and is extracted from some copper and nickel ores. It is primarily used as an industrial catalyst and in jewelry.

Notable characteristics

Palladium.

Palladium is a soft silver-white metal that resembles platinum. It is the least dense and has the lowest melting point of the platinum group metals. It is soft and ductile when annealed and greatly increases its strength and hardness when it is cold-worked. Palladium is chemically attacked by sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid in which it dissolves slowly. This metal also does not react with oxygen at normal temperatures (and thus does not tarnish in air). Palladium heated to 800°C will produce a layer of palladium(II) oxide (PdO). It lightly tarnishes in moist atmosphere containing sulfur.

This metal has the uncommon ability to absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen at room temperatures. It is thought that this possibly forms palladium hydride (PdH₂) but it is not yet clear if this is a true chemical compound.

When palladium has absorbed large amounts of hydrogen, it can swell up, like a sponge full of water, visible to the naked eye.

Common oxidation states of palladium are 0,+1, +2 and +4. Although originally +3 was thought of as one of the fundamental oxidation states of palladium, there is no evidence for palladium occurring in the +3 oxidation state; this has been investigated via X-ray diffraction for a number of compounds, indicating a dimer of palladium(II) and palladium(IV) instead. Recently, compounds with an oxidation state of +6 were synthesised.

Applications

When it is finely divided, palladium forms a good catalyst and is used to speed up hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions, as well as in petroleum cracking. A large number of carbon-carbon bond forming reactions in organic chemistry (such as the Suzuki coupling) are facilitated by catalysis with palladium compounds. It is also alloyed and used in jewelry. Other uses;

• The largest use of palladium today is in catalytic converters. Much research is in progress to discover ways to replace the much more expensive platinum with palladium in this application.
• Palladium is one of three metals which can be alloyed with gold to produce White gold. (Nickel and Silver can also be used.)
• Similar to gold, palladium can be beaten into a thin leaf form as thin as 100 nm (1/250,000 in).
• Since 1939 palladium itself has occasionally been used as a precious metal in jewelry, often as a replacement for platinum. ( ).
• Hydrogen easily diffuses through heated palladium; thus, it provides a means of purifying the gas. Also, hydrogen dissolved in palladium is highly reactive, allowing it to be used in various chemical reductions.
• Palladium (and palladium-silver alloys) are used as electrodes in multi-layer ceramic capacitors.
• Palladium (sometimes alloyed with nickel) is used in connector platings in consumer electronics.
• Palladium is also used in dentistry , watch making, in aircraft spark plugs and in the production of surgical instruments and electrical contacts.
• Palladium is also used to make professional transverse flutes.
• It is also used as Palladium-Hydrogen electrode in electrochemical studies.
• Palladium dichloride can absorb large amounts of carbon monoxide gas, and is used in carbon monoxide detectors.

History

Palladium was discovered by William Hyde Wollaston in 1803. This element was named by Wollaston in 1804 after the asteroid Pallas, which was discovered two years earlier.

Wollaston found element 46 in crude platinum ore from South America. He did this by dissolving the ore in aqua regia, neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide, Na OH, precipitating platinum as ammonium chloroplatinate through treatment with ammonium chloride, NH₄Cl, and then adding mercuric cyanide to form the compound palladium cyanide. Finally, he heated the resulting compound in order to extract palladium metal.

The compound palladium chloride was at one time prescribed as a tuberculosis treatment at the rate of 0.065g per day (approximately one milligram per kilogram of body weight). This treatment did not have many negative side effects, but was later replaced by more effective drugs.

The element played an essential role in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment, also known as cold fusion.

In 2000, Ford Motor Company created a price bubble in palladium by stockpiling large amounts of the metal, fearing interrupted supplies from Russia. As prices fell in early 2001, Ford lost nearly $1 billion U.S. dollars.

Occurrence

Palladium is found as a free metal and alloyed with platinum and gold with platinum group metals in placer deposits of the Ural Mountains, Australia, Ethiopia, South and North America. It is commercially produced from nickel-copper deposits found in South Africa, Ontario and Siberia; the huge volume of ore processed makes this extraction profitable in spite of the low proportion of palladium in these ores. The world's largest single producer of Palladium is MMC Norilsk Nickel, headquartered in Moscow.

About the possibility of producing palladium in reactors or extracting it from spent nuclear fuel, see Synthesis of noble metals.

Isotopes

Naturally-occurring palladium is composed of six isotopes. The most stable radioisotopes are ¹⁰⁷Pd with a half-life of 6.5 million years, ¹⁰³Pd with a half-life of 17 days, and ¹⁰⁰Pd with a half-life of 3.63 days. Eighteen other radioisotopes have been characterized with atomic weights ranging from 92.936 u (⁹³Pd) to 119.924 u (¹²⁰Pd). Most of these have half-lifes that are less than a half an hour except ¹⁰¹Pd (half-life: 8.47 hours), ¹⁰⁹Pd (half-life: 13.7 hours), and ¹¹²Pd (half-life: 21 hours).

The primary decay mode before the most abundant stable isotope, ¹⁰⁶Pd, is electron capture and the primary mode after is beta decay. The primary decay product before ¹⁰⁶Pd is rhodium and the primary product after is silver.

Radiogenic ¹⁰⁷Ag is a decay product of ¹⁰⁷Pd and was first discovered in the Santa Clara, California meteorite of 1978. The discoverers suggest that the coalescence and differentiation of iron-cored small planets may have occurred 10 million years after a nucleosynthetic event. ¹⁰⁷Pd versus Ag correlations observed in bodies, which have clearly been melted since accretion of the solar system, must reflect the presence of short-lived nuclides in the early solar system.