Antimony trisulfide
Antimony trisulfide (Template:Chem2) is found in nature as the crystalline mineral stibnite and the amorphous red mineral (actually a mineraloid)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> metastibnite.<ref>SUPERGENE METASTIBNITE FROM MINA ALACRAN, PAMPA LARGA, COPIAPO, CHILE, Alan H Clark, THE AMERICAN MINERALOGIST. VOL. 55., 1970</ref> It is manufactured for use in safety matches, military ammunition, explosives and fireworks. It is also used as friction materials in break lining. It is very important critical primer material for military applications and tracer bullets.<ref> www.antimonytrisulfide.com </ref> It also is used in the production of ruby-colored glass and in plastics as a flame retardant.<ref name="Greenwood">Template:Greenwood&Earnshaw2nd</ref> Historically the stibnite form was used as a grey pigment in paintings produced in the 16th century.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1817, the dye and fabric chemist, John Mercer discovered the non-stoichiometric compound Antimony Orange (approximate formula Template:Chem2), the first good orange pigment available for cotton fabric printing.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Antimony trisulfide was also used as the image sensitive photoconductor in vidicon camera tubes. It is a semiconductor with a direct band gap of 1.8–2.5 eV.Template:Citation needed With suitable doping, p and n type materials can be produced.<ref>Electrochemistry of Metal Chalcogenides, Mirtat Bouroushian, Springer, 2010</ref>
Preparation and reactionsEdit
Template:Chem2 can be prepared from the elements at temperature 500–900 °C:<ref name="Greenwood"/>
Template:Chem2 is precipitated when [[hydrogen sulfide|Template:Chem2]] is passed through an acidified solution of Sb(III).<ref name = "HOWI">Template:Holleman&Wiberg</ref> This reaction has been used as a gravimetric method for determining antimony, bubbling Template:Chem2 through a solution of Sb(III) compound in hot HCl deposits an orange form of Template:Chem2 which turns black under the reaction conditions.<ref name = "Vogel">A.I. Vogel, (1951), Quantitative Inorganic analysis, (2d edition), Longmans Green and Co</ref>
Template:Chem2 is readily oxidised, reacting vigorously with oxidising agents.<ref name="Greenwood"/> It burns in air with a blue flame. It reacts with incandescence with cadmium, magnesium and zinc chlorates. Mixtures of Template:Chem2 and chlorates may explode.<ref>Hazardous Laboratory Chemicals Disposal Guide, Third Edition, CRC Press, 2003, Margaret-Ann Armour, Template:ISBN</ref>
In the extraction of antimony from antimony ores the alkaline sulfide process is employed where Template:Chem2 reacts to form thioantimonate(III) salts (also called thioantimonite):<ref name="Anderson2012">Template:Cite journal</ref>
A number of salts containing different thioantimonate(III) ions can be prepared from Template:Chem2. These include:<ref>Inorganic Reactions and Methods, The Formation of Bonds to Group VIB (O, S, Se, Te, Po) Elements (Part 1) (Volume 5) Ed. A.P, Hagen,1991, Wiley-VCH, Template:ISBN</ref>
Schlippe's salt, Template:Chem2, a thioantimonate(V) salt is formed when Template:Chem2 is boiled with sulfur and sodium hydroxide. The reaction can be represented as:<ref name = "HOWI"/>
StructureEdit
The structure of the black needle-like form of Template:Chem2, stibnite, consists of linked ribbons in which antimony atoms are in two different coordination environments, trigonal pyramidal and square pyramidal.<ref name = "HOWI"/> Similar ribbons occur in Template:Chem2 and Template:Chem2.<ref>Wells A.F. (1984) Structural Inorganic Chemistry 5th edition Oxford Science Publications Template:ISBN</ref> The red form, metastibnite, is amorphous. Recent work suggests that there are a number of closely related temperature dependent structures of stibnite which have been termed stibnite (I) the high temperature form, identified previously, stibnite (II) and stibnite (III).<ref>Kuze S., Du Boulay D., Ishizawa N., Saiki A, Pring A.; (2004), X ray diffraction evidence for a monoclinic form of stibnite, Sb2S3, below 290K; American Mineralogist, 9(89), 1022-1025.</ref> Other paper shows that the actual coordination polyhedra of antimony are in fact Template:Chem2, with (3+4) coordination at the M1 site and (5+2) at the M2 site.Template:Cln These coordinations consider the presence of secondary bonds. Some of the secondary bonds impart cohesion and are connected with packing.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>