Hyperstoichiometric interaction between silver and mercury at the nanoscale

Kseniia V Katok; Raymond L D Whitby; Takahiro Fukuda; Toru Maekawa; Igor Bezverkhyy; Sergey V Mikhalovsky; Andrew B Cundy

doi:10.1002/anie.201106776

Hyperstoichiometric interaction between silver and mercury at the nanoscale

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2012 Mar 12;51(11):2632-5. doi: 10.1002/anie.201106776. Epub 2012 Feb 3.

Authors

Kseniia V Katok¹, Raymond L D Whitby, Takahiro Fukuda, Toru Maekawa, Igor Bezverkhyy, Sergey V Mikhalovsky, Andrew B Cundy

Affiliation

¹ Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Group, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Brighton, UK.

Abstract

Breaking through the stoichiometry barrier: as the diameter of silver particles is decreased below a critical size of 32 nm, the molar ratio of aqueous Hg(II) to Ag(0) drastically increases beyond the conventional Hg/Ag ratio of 0.5:1, leading to hyperstoichiometry with a maximum ratio of 1.125:1. Therein, around 99% of the initial silver is retained to rapidly form a solid amalgam with reduced mercury.