Ruthenium is not exactly a household word. It was named after Russia by its discoverers who found it during refining platinum slated to be minted into Rubles. To this day it plays an important role in jewelry where it's used to strengthen platinum. A few master jewelers have made one-off pure Ru rings but the process is immensely difficult because of its very high melting point, its exceptional hardness and the fact that when working with it the damn thing will break if you look at it wrong!

The ruthenium metal for sale here comes from a technique called sintering where you start out with powdered metal and compress it to enormous pressure until the individual grains fuse together. Since ruthenium melts at a sky high melting point of 2300°C this process is thus a cheaper alternative.

CAS 7440-18-8