Platinum is finding increasing use in the semiconductor and sensor industries, industry organisation the World Platinum Investment Council points out.

In 2024, electrical demand for platinum reached an estimated 90 000 oz and accounted for about 1% of total platinum demand.

Historically, electrical demand for platinum has mainly comprised its use in hard disk drives (HDDs).

HDD, semiconductor and sensor applications are all growing, owing to rising demand for AI and for HDDs, the associated need for more data storage capacity. 

This year, electrical demand for platinum is forecast to grow by 2% to 92 000 oz as the HDD market recovers following a period of weakness between 2019 and 2023, which saw it on a declining trend, owing to competition from solid-state drives (SSDs).

SSDs use memory chips to store data, typically using a flash memory, whereas HDDs are data storage devices comprised of magnetic platters coated with a platinum alloy media to improve thermal and magnetic stability.

Faster speed and cost competitiveness with HDDs were two of the key drivers behind the growth in SSD adoption in recent years, especially in consumer applications such as personal computers and gaming consoles, the council explains.

However, it posits that HDDs are lower cost than SSDs on a per gigabyte basis, presenting an alternative for organisations needing to store large amounts of data.

Also, the council highlights that the HDD market has benefited from the introduction of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, which has improved storage, or ‘areal’ density; growing storage capacity without increasing HDD size or power requirements.

“These latter two features are of particular interest to the data storage segment which is deploying a broad range of solutions to better manage energy efficiency and storage capacity to reduce its carbon footprint,” the council avers.

Meanwhile, the council indicates that the expansion of AI applications is engendering strong global demand for semiconductors.

The development of new semiconductor fabrication facilities to accommodate the expansion of advanced process (less than ten nanometre) semiconductor production capacity is directly benefiting platinum demand as platinum-coated thin-films are used in the semiconductor manufacturing process, it highlights.

Platinum is also used in sensors for a variety of uses, including AI, where models need to be trained with large amounts of data.

By combining AI models with sensors, such as thermal cameras, ultrasonic sensors, photocells, inductive sensors, radar sensors and motion sensors, the amount of data needed to train a model can be reduced, the council avers.

Engineering and technology company Bosch has announced plans to invest €3-billion in its semiconductor business and in sensor development and manufacturing by 2026, the council points out.