JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Platinum‑based equipment is critical for producing large, flawless crystals for electronics and optics applications, says the World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC) in its 60 Seconds feature.

Crystals are central to technologies in everyday use and platinum plays a key role in their production, WPIC reports.

Hosted overwhelmingly by South Africa, platinum and platinum group metals (PGMs) are already doing their bit in automotive and energy, medical and healthcare, industrial and chemical manufacturing, electronics and everyday life, which embraces making cars safer, treating cancer, and even maintaining personal hygiene, keeping people warm and food fresh.

In 2012, South Africa’s late mining industry doyen, Brian Gilbertson, highlighted that South Africa’s platinum endowment provided an opportunity for international value-chain collaboration, a prospect which is now presenting itself again at a time of growing demand from particularly East Asia.

This followed former Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll in 2011 telling the United Nations climate change convention’s seventeenth Conference of the Parties in Durban that using PGMs to generate clean hydrogen power would sustain hundreds of thousands of South African jobs and simultaneously provide zero-emission electricity.

With the current global fuel disruption and reviving interest in a cleaner molecular fuel alternative, the Gilbertson and Carroll contentions are resurfacing against a background of East Asia and also Europe re-emerging as candidates for green value-chain collaboration.

On top of all this, platinum remains the gift that just keeps on giving, with platinum playing the key role in the industrially-grown crystals that WPIC is talking about finding their way into smartphones, computers, light-emitting-diode lighting, medical imaging equipment, and advanced sensors.

During crystal growth, it is platinum’s strength at extreme temperature that enables the crucibles to hold and shape molten materials. What is also crucial is that the platinum helps the crystal to achieve the ultrahigh purity that its end applications demand, with the crystal structures giving materials essential predictable electrical, optical and mechanical properties.

Crucibles are not the only platinum products used in crystal growing. Often the hydraulic stylus that manipulates the seed crystal is comprised of platinum, as are the protective baffles used to limit the outward radiation of heat. These components are engineered from semi-finished platinum components such as wires, ribbons, and sheets. Currently, other PGMs, including iridium and rhodium, can be alloyed with platinum to improve strength and lifetime under extreme conditions.

The link between platinum and crystal growth is not new. Platinum crucibles became essential laboratory and production tools as early industrial crystal growing techniques emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This took place alongside the development of electric lighting, optics and early electronics. As crystal sizes increased and industrial demand grew, platinum’s role expanded with it. 

“We manufacture platinum labware, including crucibles, dishes and beakers, to provide maximum service life, with the bases being thicker than the walls. The capacities and shapes available meet most laboratory requirements, and we can custom make anything you require. Most of the laboratory crucibles and dishes are made from 99.7% platinum with small additions of iridium and rhodium,” Johnson Matthey states on its website. This long-established PGMs company also offers iridium crucibles for crystal growth and glass manufacturing and analysis. Iridium is an alternative to platinum/rhodium alloys for applications including glass manufacturing and growing high purity single crystals.

Iridium crucibles are used to grow various metal oxide single crystals, including scintillation crystals used in metal scanners and mobile phones as well as those used in liquid crystal display backlighting.

The name platinum originates from the Spanish word platina, a diminutive of plata "silver". It is one of the rarer elements in earth's crust. As it does not corrode, even at high temperatures, it is declared a noble metal.

Platinum-based drugs have been developed to treat a wide range of cancers. Platinum-cured silicones are used to coat and protect automotive air bags from their explosive systems. Platinum-cured silicone mixtures are used in a range of personal care products from lipsticks and shampoos to contact lenses. Additionally, the use of silicones in medical elastomers is one that is showing strong growth.

Platinum catalysts are used to make the basic raw materials for the manufacture of plastics, synthetic rubber and polyester fibres used to produce clothes and blankets. 

Fuel cell mini-grid electrification technology can provide clean electricity to off-grid homes and schools, while low-temperature, quick-start platinum-based fuel cell electric vehicles protect global climate by emitting only water from their tailpipes. 

With AI at the ready to assist, South Africa's unmatched PGMs endowment can be competitively sharpened to meet all global clean energy imperatives – and lower unemployment at the same time.