Blog

Gathered here is going to be a bunch of project ideas that I think about and probably never finish up.

Titanium 3+ Crystals

I had the idea a while back about making titanium-based crystals. The basic way of getting 3+ titanium ions is to put titanium metal into a sulfuric acid solution, with a tiny amount of fluoride ions as a catalyst.

The problem with Ti (III) is that it is not air-stable. It really wants to react with oxygen to make titanium dioxide. So to crystallize this, I was thinking of crystallizing by vacuum.

See, under vacuum all the water can be removed from the system, leaving just the titanium(III) sulfate behind. Done slowly, this evaporation by crystallization may result in some pretty purple crystals.

Titanium 3+ Imagery

Titanium(III) chloride solution in a vial Titanium(III) sulfate powder

Phosphophyllite synthesis

A few years back I was able to synthesize some copper phosphate crystals. Pictured to the left.

Phosphophyllite is a Zinc Iron Phosphate, known for pretty green crystals and also for being the protagonist of the series Houseki No Kuni.

The challenges of this synthesis is that transition metal phosphates are:

  1. Insoluble in water.
  2. Require dissolution in phosphoric acid.
  3. Have retrograde solutility.
  4. Are often times not air stable.

Phosphate synthesis

Copper phosphate I synthesized