Osmium introduced commercially in 1902. After only a few years, osmium was replaced by the more stable metal tungsten. Tungsten has the highest melting point among all metals, and its use in light bulbs increases the luminous efficacy and life of incandescent lamps. The light bulb manufacturer Osram (founded in 1906, when three German companies, Auer-Gesellschaft, AEG and Siemens & Halske, combined their lamp production facilities) derived its name from the elements of osmium and Wolfram (the latter is German for tungsten). Like palladium, powdered osmium effectively absorbs hydrogen atoms. This could make osmium a potential candidate for a metal-hydride battery
Melting-point depression Melting-point depression The melting temperature of a bulk material is not dependent on its size. However, as the dimensions of a material decrease towards the atomic scale, the melting temperature scales with the material dimensions. The decrease in melting temperature can be on the order of tens to hundreds of degrees for metals with nanometer dimensions. Melting-point depression is most evident in nanowires, nanotubes and nanoparticles, which all melt at lower temperatures than bulk amounts of the same material. Changes in melting point occur because nanoscale materials have a much larger surface-to-volume ratio than bulk materials, drastically altering their thermodynamic