All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 44, a transition metal
A hard platinum-group metal named for Russia, found in hard drives, electrical contacts and Nobel Prize-winning catalysts.
Period 5, group 8. The other transition metals are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
Like other transition metals, ruthenium loses its outer s electrons, and often some d electrons as well, to form positive ions, and it can form more than one kind.
One of the rarest metals, found with platinum in ores from South Africa and Russia and recovered while refining platinum and nickel.
Karl Ernst Claus isolated it in 1844 at Kazan University from the residue left after dissolving platinum ore from the Ural Mountains, and named it after Ruthenia, a Latin name for Russia.
Thin ruthenium layers in hard disk drives, electrical contacts and chip resistors; a hardener in platinum and palladium jewelry; catalysts, including the Grubbs catalysts recognized by the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; and light-absorbing dyes for some solar cells.
Ruthenium tetroxide is volatile, toxic and can explode.