From spintronics to PFAS conversion: what's next for PGM catalysis research?

Platinum group metals (PGMs) are the basis of many products that enhance daily life and support the global economy. From chemicals production to chemotherapy and fuel cell technology, one in four manufactured products today contains or has been manufactured using a PGM. [i] [ii] Automotive catalysis remains the most established application for PGMs, but new research questions continue to emerge, for example in spintronics and photocatalytic biomass conversion. In these technologies and beyond, PGMs' electronic and catalytic properties make them ideally placed to play a growing role in the digital revolution and energy transition. As well-supplied materials, it will be research, not availability, that determines how far that role extends. Answering the following research questions will therefore be of the utmost importance in order to address societal challenges.

Spintronics - a route to energy-efficient computing

Global computing energy demand is rising sharply as data and processing needs increase. In particular, the rise of AI is driving the deployment of high-performance accelerated servers, with the global electricity consumption from data centres estimated at having grown at a rate of 12% per year over the past five years. [iii] As such, making energy-efficient hardware is an increasingly urgent research priority. [iv]

Semiconductors will play an essential goal in this evolution. They underpin most modern devices, encoding and manipulating information by moving electronic charge around a device. These electrons carry not only charge but also a magnetic degree of freedom, or ‘spin’. Over recent decades, the spin-orbit coupling of platinum, iridium, palladium and rhodium has been identified as central to next-generation non-volatile magnetic memory. Notably, the large spin-orbit coupling of many PGM-containing materials produces the magnetic anisotropy needed to minimise the magnetic volume required to store data. PGMs thus present a route to lower-energy computing, addressing the rising energy cost of modern data demands.

The open research question is this: how can scientists optimise spin-torque efficiency across antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic PGM-containing materials? The question carries real weight: magnetic memory currently represents around 1% of the global semiconductor memory market but is projected to grow to over 10% in the next 5-10 years. 

For researchers, that gap is the opportunity: the next phase of spin-orbit torque research isn't just chasing higher efficiency in the lab, but proving PGM-based materials can hold their performance advantage under real manufacturing constraints.

Learn more from our PGM conference: Axel Hoffmann on PGMs and spintronics 

Palladium catalysed PFAS breakdown: a route to clean water?

Clean water is essential for life, yet access to it remains a challenge for many people in the world; 1.2 billion people globally lack access to safely managed drinking water services, with environmental pressures and polluting human activities only exacerbating this problem. One such example is the accumulation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) within water systems. Also known as ‘forever chemicals’, PFAS is a group of over 5000 substances whose high persistence and toxicity is linked to long term health effects such as cancer, high blood pressure and liver damage. [v]

However, PGMs provide hope in this area: in recent, innovative research, they show potential in breaking down PFAS to be soluble in water. In particular, it has been shown that palladium is capable of catalysing the reductive defluorination of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), thereby breaking down the notoriously strong C–F bond under room temperature reaction conditions. In a 70-day continuous study, over 99% of PFOA removal was observed within 24 hours.

The open research question is how to further improve the operational range of this catalytic approach. It has already been shown that Pd-based bimetallic catalysts can enable defluorination at neutral pH, opening up the process to more practically accessible conditions. There is scope for this approach to be developed upon and scaled up; similarly, by adapting the method to break down increasing numbers of PFAS molecules, PGMs could make an enormous impact in addressing global contaminant problems and safeguarding our water systems for the future.

Learn more from Michael Wong: “Palladium-based catalysts for breaking down fluorine-containing forever chemicals”

PGM-enabled photocatalytic biomass-to-hydrogen

Hydrogen underpins many of the technologies modern life depends on, from transport to power generation, and that demand will only grow as the energy system decarbonises. With the world transitioning to more sustainable technologies, the question of how, and from what, hydrogen is produced and stored is becoming increasingly important.

Biomass is one route to hydrogen production. Using photocatalytic conversion, hydrogen can be produced from cellulose, the most abundant biopolymer on Earth: a photocatalytic semiconductor is irradiated with light, and PGM catalysts enable the solar-driven conversion of lignocellulosic biomass (cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin) into hydrogen. Crucially, this sidesteps the food-versus-fuel problem associated with first-generation biofuels, presenting an innovative solution with minimal negative impact. [vi]

However, there are challenges yet to be resolved. The open research question is how to maximise conversion efficiency under variable, non-laboratory light conditions, as well as manage lignin's cross-polymerisation behaviour, which makes it significantly harder to process than cellulose.

So far, most published studies have used simplified lignin model compounds under controlled laboratory light. Real lignocellulosic feedstocks are more variable and highly cross-linked, while natural sunlight is far less consistent than a lab lamp. Bridging this gap is the next challenge: showing that PGM-based photocatalysts can maintain their efficiency with real feedstocks under real-world sunlight.

Hear more in Chris Hardacre’s presentation: "Photocatalytic conversion of biomass to hydrogen"

What's next for PGM research?

Research on PGMs is opening new territory. Backed by active research in spintronics, photocatalysis, and PFAS breakdown, they remain central to new science well beyond their established role in automotive catalysis. Improving efficiency and showcasing it under real conditions in these fields is now the central research question, and one likely to shape a meaningful part of the energy and digital transitions in the coming decade.

Crucially, these fields are still open: neither spin-torque efficiency at manufacturing scale nor photocatalytic conversion under real feedstock and light conditions has been solved. Likewise, the potential for breaking down a wider range of PFAS chemicals is only just starting to be explored. That's an invitation for researchers working in materials science, catalysis and energy to bring their expertise to genuinely unresolved problems, not incremental ones, and make a major difference to the energy landscape.