Researchers at Sandia national laboratories have discovered how to nanostructure platinum in order to increase the materials efficiency and usage.

By manipulating the structure of platinum, researchers can control, amongst other things, the size, shape and stability of platinum.

This is done so that platinum can be used in different forms and for different items such as for sensors and magnetic devices.

Also, as platinum is such an expensive material restructuring it in this way means that less platinum is actually being used.

John Shelnutt, leading researcher at Sandia, described this important part of the research: "One way to minimize platinum usage is to increase catalytic efficiency by nanostructuring the platinum metal."

"As catalytic or device efficiency may depend on both the size and the shape of the platinum material, the preparation of nanostructured platinum with specific structural features is an area of considerable interest."

Researchers found that the restructured platinum behaved largely in the same way as platinum black and polycrystalline platinum.


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