Articles

Platinum/Iridium Alloy Wire: The Material Behind Pacemakers, STM Tips, and Spark Plugs

Platinum/iridium alloy wire offers a combination of properties that neither metal provides alone: the corrosion resistance and biocompatibility of platinum, strengthened by iridium's exceptional hardness. The 90/10 alloy is the same composition used to make the International Prototype of the Kilogram — and those same qualities now underpin applications from pacemaker electrodes and deep brain stimulation probes to scanning tunnelling microscope tips and high-performance spark plugs. Advent Research Materials supplies Pt/Ir alloy wire to specification for research applications.