Why is palladium so expensive?

In terms of abundance in the Earth's crust, the rarest metals are gold, platinum, osmium, iridium, palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, tellurium, and rhenium.

Palladium is actively traded as a commodity and is influenced by investor demand, economic conditions, and market speculation. Overall, while palladium is used extensively in industrial applications, its rarity, limited supply, and high demand make it a valuable and sought-after precious metal.

Most palladium is used in catalytic converters for cars. It is also used in jewellery and some dental fillings and crowns. White gold is an alloy of gold decolorised by alloying with another metal, sometimes palladium.

It is used in the electronics industry in ceramic capacitors, found in laptop computers and mobile phones. These consist of layers of palladium sandwiched between layers of ceramic.

Finely divided palladium is a good catalyst for hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions. Hydrogen easily diffuses through heated palladium, which provides a way of separating and purifying the gas.