Abstract
Expensive and explosive! The reaction of ammonia and gold(III) compounds leads to explosive products known as “fulminating gold”. Gold scientists should be aware of the potential hazards involved in the reaction of these starting materials. Herein, a historic and scientific review on this fascinating substance is presented. Fulminating gold has been known since medieval times, but cannot be fully characterized due to its polymeric and heterogeneous character. Magnetic measurements confirm previous EXAFS analyses that the gold atoms have a square planar coordination environment (AuN4-moieties that are party connected and form a 3-dimensional network). The explosive properties and resulting safety instructions are discussed in detail as well.
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Georg Steinhauser was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1979. He received his diploma in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 2003 and his PhD in radiochemistry from the Vienna University of Technology in 2005. His research interests are in radiochemistry and inorganic chemistry, including industrial and environmental chemistry. He is currently employed at the LMU Munich as an Erwin-Schrödinger-Fellow in the field of energetic materials.
Jürgen Evers was born in Dortmund, Germany, 1941. Until 1965, he worked as laboratory assistent and then studied chemistry at the FU Berlin. He received his Dipl-Chem. (1971) and the Dr. rer. nat. (1974), both from the LMU Munich. Until 1975, he worked at the ETH Zürich in the Solid State Physics Group of G. Busch and E. Kaldis. After the Habilitation (1982) at the LMU Munich, he was Heisenberg-Stipendiat (1984), Priv.-Doz. (1987) and Professor (1992). His research interests are high pressure investigations on Zintl compounds with a belt apparatus (50 kbar) and with a diamond anvil cell (800 kbar).
Stefanie Jakob was born in Munich, Germany, in 1979. She received her diploma in chemistry (2004) and her PhD (2007) from the LMU Munich. Her research interests are in inorganic solid state chemistry, especially crystallography and magnetism. She is currently employed at the LMU Munich.
Thomas M. Klapötke was born in Göttingen, Germany, in 1961. He received his Dipl.-Chem. (1984), Dr. rer. nat. (1986), and Habilitation (1990) from the TU Berlin and worked as a Privat Dozent at the same university from 1990 to 1995. After two years (1995— 1997) at Glasgow University, he took up his present position as professor of inorganic chemistry at University of Munich in 1997. His scientific interests include explosives, high-energy-density materials, computational chemistry, azide chemistry, fluorine chemistry, strong oxidizers and nitro chemistry.
Gilbert Oehlinger was born in Seefeld, Austria, in 1945. He is a laboratory technician. His manifold research interests include X-ray investigations at ambient and at high pressure.
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Steinhauser, G., Evers, J., Jakob, S. et al. A review on fulminating gold (Knallgold). Gold Bull 41, 305–317 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03214888
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03214888