Platinum-Iridium Spooled Wire (Pt85-Ir15)

Platinum/Iridium Alloy Spooled Wire (Pt85/Ir15) occupies the intermediate position between the most workable and the higher-hardness grades in the platinum-iridium series, offering a modest step up in mechanical performance over Pt90/Ir10 while retaining meaningful ductility for drawing and winding operations. Peer-reviewed studies consistently demonstrate that iridium content drives monotonic increases in elastic modulus, hardness, and tensile strength across the Pt-Ir system, with the strengthening mechanism dominated by solid solution misfit between the platinum and iridium lattice parameters. At 15% iridium, this alloy sits where the strength and hardness gains begin to become operationally significant without the reduction in formability that becomes more pronounced at higher iridium loadings. It shares the full chemical inertness, high melting point, and biocompatibility of the wider Pt-Ir family, making it suitable for precision electrical contacts, neural stimulation electrodes, thermocouple wire, and high-reliability aerospace and instrumentation components where Pt90/Ir10 offers insufficient hardness but the higher-iridium grades would be unnecessarily difficult to draw or wind. In research, it is used in surface characterisation, electrode fabrication, and precision sensor development.