News

Ivanhoe Mines, a Canadian mining and exploration company known for several high-profile discoveries, has driven underground development into the high-grade Platreef orebody for the first time. The company’s Executive Co-Chair Robert Friedland and President and Chief Executive Officer Marna Cloete detailed the breakthrough, with mining crews entering the orebody at the 850-metre level with the first blast of high-grade ore in early May.

Canadian exploration company Power Metallic has reported results from its deepest intersection to date at the Lion Zone, carried out in the wake of successful exploration activities last year. The 2024 discovery of the zone, 5.5 kilometres away from the Nisk Main Zone, has shifted the company’s focus towards what could prove a game-changing discovery.

Australian mining company Southern Palladium has received an environmental authorization (EA) on its flagship Tier 1 Bengwenyama project from South Africa’s Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR). The license outlines rights on underground mining and related infrastructural activities on the project, marking a key milestone towards development.

A study from a team of chemists working at McGill University in Montreal, Canada has proposed a new method for synthesising palladium catalysts using electrochemical potential, supporting both oxidative addition and reductive elimination with two-electron exchange in mild temperature and pressure conditions.

A team of functional materials researchers in China developed a copper–palladium catalyst that has been shown to improve catalytic activity and selectivity in the electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR), leading to improved ammonia yields. Scaling this process could significantly reduce the energy and environmental burden of the ammonia industry as a whole.

Zhe Gong et al. from the China University of Geosciences and Zhiping Deng and Xiaolei Wang from the University of Alberta (Canada) have developed a highly efficient palladium catalyst that could support the large-scale rollout of hydrogen fuel cells. The catalyst was designed by doping palladium with cobalt producing atomic cobalt (Co)-doped Pd metallene (Co-Pdene), and demonstrated exceptional electrocatalytic performance while maintaining its structural integrity.

A team of researchers at the University of Milan has developed a new method to speed up the hydrogenation and dehydrogenation of magnesium nanoparticles that could significantly improve the efficiency of hydrogen storage and support easier scaling up the technology.

A team of researchers at Peking University has achieved stable chain-growth polymerization using propargyl/allenyl palladium intermediates, making it possible to synthesize complex polymers in a new way. The research was carried out by Zheng-Lin Wang and Rong Zhu as part of a joint project, with support from Beijing National Laboratory of Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering.

A team of scientists based in Siberia has synthesised palladium–carbon nanoparticles that could improve energy sources and support research across further applications.