Investing In Ruthenium: The Overlooked Tech Metal

Platinum Group Metals

Rare metals are increasingly considered strategic elements, as they are consumed in small quantities for vital applications in the production of electronics, AI, clean energy, advanced weaponry, etc.

This is generally true for all metals of the platinum group (follow the links for a detailed investment report like this one regarding the corresponding metal) :

• Platinum
• Iridium
• Osmium
• Palladium
• Rhodium
• Ruthenium (the topic of this report)

These metals tend to be found together in the same ore, with platinum and palladium being the largest part, and the other forming trace elements that need to be refined into a pure form for industrial applications.

With a small market and geographically concentrated sources, ruthenium is very exposed to potential market disruption and price volatility. This can make ruthenium an interesting metal for investors, as its price is reaching an all-time high, beating the previous historical record of 2011.

Source: Strategic Metal Invest

Ruthenium is used in corrosion-resistant alloys, electric contacts, sensors, and cancer treatment.

(If you are interested in investing in precious metals, you might also want to consult our articles Investing in Gold and Investing in Silver).

What Is Ruthenium?

Ruthenium is a silvery metal of the platinum metal group. It is rarer, harder, and more brittle than platinum.

It has a very high melting point of 2,250° C (4,082° F), is chemically stable, and resists corrosion, not tarnishing easily.

Ruthenium has seven stable isotopes, with Ruthenium-102 the most common form (31.5% relative abundance): ⁹⁶Ru, ⁹⁸Ru, ⁹⁹Ru, ¹⁰⁰Ru, ¹⁰¹Ru, ¹⁰²Ru, and ¹⁰⁴Ru.

This element was discovered in the 19^th century by Russian scientist Karl Karlovich Klaus, when working at the Kazan University, but was partially isolated before by Russian chemist Gottfried Osann in Tartu (today Estonia) and Polish chemist Jedrzej Sniadecki.

Source: Heraeus

It was named after the Latin word Ruthenia, an ancient name for Russia.

Ruthenium was first purified from the residue of platinum coin production from ore extracted in the Ural mountains, which is still today an important source of platinum and ruthenium.

Ruthenium Supply & Market

Ruthenium is almost exclusively obtained as a byproduct of platinum and nickel mining. This makes the supply of this metal very inelastic, leading to over- or under-production when demand fluctuates or when mining volume for platinum and nickel changes.

Ruthenium is around 0.001 ppm (parts per million) of the Earth’s crust, making it the sixth rarest metal on Earth. Its annual production hovers at only about 20-30 tonnes.

The 3 main sources are South Africa, Russia, and Zimbabwe, with some production in the USA, Canada, and Australia.

By far, South Africa is the most important producer with two-thirds of global production, followed by Russia (1/4^th), in large part because the platinum group metal ores in the country are much richer in ruthenium than anywhere else, up to 11% of total PGM volume.

Source: Knollmont

In South Africa, the Bushveld Complex, known for its rich platinum and platinum-metal group deposits, is the primary source of ruthenium.

Source: Britannica

The global ruthenium market is estimated at $601M in 2024, and is expected to grow at a 5.2% CAGR until 2032, reaching $900M.

Contrary to other rare metals, ruthenium refining is not concentrated in China or Russia, reducing its geopolitical risks to disruption of Russian-origin supplies or domestic instability in South Africa.
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Ruthenium Applications

The two main applications of ruthenium are for electrical/electronics and chemical production/alloys, making up the bulk of ruthenium demand.
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Electrical & Electronics Applications of Ruthenium

The high melting point and excellent conductivity of ruthenium make it a preferred choice for electrical contacts and thin-film resistors.

Ruthenium is often found in products like supercapacitors and chip resistors, where it provides high reversibility, cyclability, a wide working potential window, and high capacitance value.

Source: Research Dive

It is also used in hard drives, which require ruthenium between the magnetic layers to store data in an ultra-thin film less than one nanometer thick. Demand from hard drive manufacturing and a shortfall in ruthenium production had been a key reason for the previous spike in price.

Today, the presence of ruthenium in hard drives and integrated circuits makes it a small but key component of data centers, especially with the build-up of massive AI data centers.

As AI rolls out, as data storage requirements increase, you need a technology that is still cheap, cost-effective, and can store large quantities of data. Technology that leans on other elements is still very expensive.”

Sandeep Kaler – Market Strategy Analyst at SFA

Ruthenium is also used in the production of high-purity synthetic crystals, including sapphire crystals for LED manufacturing.

Circuit boards using ruthenium are also used in aerospace and defense applications, where temperature variations, corrosion, etc., require stronger resistance.

Alloys

When mixed with platinum and/or palladium, ruthenium increases the strength of the resulting alloy.

The hardened ruthenium-based alloys are commonly used for electrical contacts exposed to severe wear resistance.

This is especially important for applications that can damage the platinum layer, like the electrical contact and electrode base metal used for electroplating or sputtering (used for producing thin films and coatings).

Source: Sharretts Plating

For the same reason of increased hardness, ruthenium can be used in jewelry for platinum items.

Ruthenium can also be added to other metals. For example, adding 0.1 percent ruthenium to titanium makes it about 100 times more resistant to corrosion.

Ruthenium is typically used in small amounts in applications such as the jet engine turbine blades and other parts exposed to extreme temperatures or corrosive conditions.

Even a small amount of ruthenium electroplating in aerospace can greatly increase corrosion resistance, which increases the equipment’s lifespan and helps ensure it can operate safely.

Ruthenium has a melting point of 4,233 degrees Fahrenheit and a boiling point of 7,502 degrees Fahrenheit, so it can increase many materials’ resistance to high temperatures.

Chemical and Catalytic Uses of Ruthenium

Like most platinum group metals, ruthenium can be used as a catalyst for various chemical reactions.

One common use of ruthenium by the chemical industry is to coat the anodes of electrochemical cells for chlorine production from salt water. The same applications see Ruthenium oxide coatings, often combined with iridium, used for electrochemical chlorination in ship ballast water treatment systems.

It is also used for the production of ammonia and acetic acid, both of which are among the largest volumes of chemicals produced in the world.

Ruthenium can also be used for other catalytic processes, including splitting hydrogen sulfide and removing it from industrial processes such as oil refining.

Green Energy

An emerging application of ruthenium is in green and low-carbon energy production.

It can be used for many possible new forms of energy generation:

• Ruthenium is used as a photoactive dye in dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs), a new type of solar cell not yet commercialized.
• In a cobalt-chromium-manganese-ruthenium catalyst, for the production of green hydrogen without needing platinum.
  • Ruthenium, silicon, and tungsten (RuSiW) is also an option for green hydrogen production.
• In ruthenium nanoparticles for artificial photosynthesis.
• A ruthenium dye can be used in nuclear batteries (beta-voltaics) that could last decades or centuries.
• Ruthenium is a key catalyst in the Fischer–Tropsch process, where ruthenium is used to synthesize liquid fuels from syngas, itself a step in transforming captured CO2 back into liquid fuel.

Overall, the extreme resistance of ruthenium and its ability to provide an alternative to platinum for hydrogen production and photocatalysis have only barely started to be explored by scientists.

It could even be used in batteries (advanced anodes and solid-state battery systems) as a doping agent to improve electrode stability and conductivity. This would be especially relevant to aerospace and military-grade energy storage, where durability and performance under extreme conditions are paramount.

So in the next years, we might start to see a lot more consumption of ruthenium from green energy, especially if platinum prices rise too high to keep using it in catalytic applications.

Biotech and Medical Uses of Ruthenium

A small amount of ruthenium can be used for medical applications. It is notably used in:

• Optode sensors for oxygen.
• As a coloring agent (ruthenium red) for light microscopy and electron microscopy.
• The ruthenium-106 isotope is used in the radiotherapy of eye tumors.
• Ru(II) piano-stool compounds could replace platinum-based anti-cancer drugs.

Investing in Ruthenium Mining

(How to get exposure. Unlike gold or silver, ruthenium has a very small retail market, but investors can access the metal through specialized dealers offering high-purity ingots/bars with vault storage or via PGM-focused mining equities. Liquidity and spreads are typically wider than major precious metals, so custody and exit costs matter.)

Sibanye Stillwater

South African Sibanye Stillwater is one of the largest platinum producers in the world. The country produces 80% of the world’s platinum, and Sibanye Stillwater is responsible for a quarter of that production.

Source: Mining Technology

It is also a producer of platinum metal group elements like palladium, rhodium, iridium, and ruthenium. The Stillwater mine in the USA is the country’s largest source of ruthenium and other platinum group metals (PGM).

Source: Sibanye Stillwater

Sibanye Stillwater is currently diversifying to enter the gold and battery metal markets, with gold making up a significant portion of the company’s revenues due to its recent surge in prices.

Source: Mining Technology

The platinum market has been, until recently, controlled by the discussion over the adoption of EVs versus ICE (Internal Combustion Engine), with the surge in hybrid vehicle sales boosting platinum prices.

With rapid innovation in the use of hydrogen electrolysis of platinum and other platinum metal group elements, this might change. These metals are also required in most designs of fuel cells that convert hydrogen into electricity.

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