page_title: Palladium
section_title: Catalysis
hierarchical_section_title: Palladium / Applications / Catalysis
caption_attribution_description: English: Cycle for Kumada coupling
context_page_description: Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired by her when she slew Pallas. Palladium, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium form a group of elements referred to as the platinum group metals. They have similar chemical properties, but palladium has the lowest melting point and is the least dense of them.
  More than half the supply of palladium and its congener platinum is used in catalytic converters, which convert as much as 90% of the harmful gases in automobile exhaust into less noxious substances. Palladium is also used in electronics, dentistry, medicine, hydrogen purification, chemical applications, groundwater treatment, and jewelry. Palladium is a key component of fuel cells, which react hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity, heat, and water.
  Ore deposits of palladium and other PGMs are rare.
context_section_description: When it is finely divided, as with palladium on carbon, palladium forms a versatile catalyst; it speeds heterogeneous catalytic processes like hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, and petroleum cracking. Palladium is also essential to the Lindlar catalyst, also called Lindlar's Palladium. A large number of carbon–carbon bonding reactions in organic chemistry are facilitated by palladium compound catalysts. For example:
  Heck reaction
  Suzuki coupling
  Tsuji-Trost reactions
  Wacker process
  Negishi reaction
  Stille coupling
  Sonogashira coupling
  (See palladium compounds and palladium-catalyzed coupling reactions.)
  When dispersed on conductive materials, palladium is an excellent electrocatalyst for oxidation of primary alcohols in alkaline media. Palladium is also a versatile metal for homogeneous catalysis, used in combination with a broad variety of ligands for highly selective chemical transformations.
  In 2010 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis" to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki.  A 2008 study showed that palladium is an effective catalyst for carbon-fluorine bonds.
  Palladium catalysis is primarily employed in organic chemistry and industrial applications, although its use is growing as a tool for synthetic biology; in 2017, effective in vivo catalytic activity of palladium nanoparticles was demonstrated in mammals to treat disease.
caption: Catalytic cycle for Kumada cross coupling reaction, which is widely used in the synthesis of fine chemicals.
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