I've been looking at chemical stuff for platinotype and ziatype printing in hopes of finding a cheaper way of making neutral tone, archival, analog photographic prints on rag paper. At first I was testing kallitype developers to see if I could find a combination that led to neutral grays, but had no luck there. I'd settled on doing ziatypes for my prints, but then today I was looking at platinum and palladium prices to see if they were trending up or down. The website listed all the platinum group metals, which as well as platinum and palladium include osmium, iridium, rhodium, and ruthenium. Osmium, iridium, and rhodium are all a good deal more expensive than platinum and palladium. Ruthenium is around an order of magnitude more rare than platinum or palladium, but as it has far fewer uses, is about half the price of platinum. Has anyone done any research into whether ruthenium can be used as an image forming metal in alternative photographic processes? I did a bit of poking around to see if I could find any info on reduction of ruthenium compounds to ruthenium metal, but didn't find much, and as I'm not a great chemist, I didn't understand what I did find. Might it be possible to print images using a ruthenium compound cheaper than their platinum or palladium counterparts? Or does ruthenium's uselessness extend into the photographic realm?
