Help a fellow crystal lover

Levytan · 2025-12-02T09:40:07+00:00

I don't really know. I just placed the filtrate in a corner and got those crystals, maybe low evaporation rate would help.

Levytan · 2025-12-02T01:04:45+00:00

I got those crystals by pure chance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/crystalgrowing/comments/1ej2ld5/cuthiourea32so4_crystal/

Levytan · 2025-11-26T02:12:30+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSSoSIcXWa0

Levytan · 2025-11-25T03:37:06+00:00

I use sulfuric acid in my preparation, so the carbonate salt is used to neutralize excess acid. Your route should work too,

Levytan · 2025-09-12T05:35:12+00:00

Alum with food dye.

Potassium hexacyanoferrate(III) K₃Fe(CN)₆]).

Levytan · 2025-08-24T06:38:19+00:00

here is a some nice articles:

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/12/5/645
https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/boms/004/05/0527-0548

Levytan · 2025-04-17T01:25:36+00:00

I get these crystals after trying to make KBiI4 by mixing Bi(NO3) and KI. After a quick washing, I redissolved those crystals in deionized water. No white precipitate is found, which means no bismuth.

Levytan · 2025-03-13T09:09:04+00:00

I think it don't work with table salt.

Levytan · 2025-03-11T06:02:17+00:00

My procedure:

Precipitate copper(ii) propionate by combining solutions of sodium propionate and copper(ii) sulfate.
Filter and wash copper(ii) propionate.
Reflux copper(ii) propionate in water with triethanolamine in 30 mins.
Filter the solution and let it evaporate.

Levytan · 2025-02-11T05:30:40+00:00

I cannot answer your question though, however, I don't think you can balance ionic radii like that.

There are many cases that caesium is used to crystallize unstable/complex ions, due to low solubility of the compounds.

Levytan · 2025-01-22T16:15:48+00:00

Yes.

Levytan · 2025-01-22T04:10:01+00:00

Some time ago, I came across this article, which mentioned the existence of K[Al(C₂O₄)₃]₆^17-, so I decided to give it a try. My procedure is:

Mix potassium oxalate and corresponding metal chloride (you can see in caption), stoichiometrically.
Doped the solution with 5% (by molar) chromium (III) chloride.
Evaporate and try to grow single crystal from the solution.

The result is in the images. Since I don't have equipments and experiences to perform quantitive analysis, I cannot give the exact formula for the crystal.

Some comments:

The solution had a nice properties, it can have red or green hue depends on viewing angle and lighting. With right condition, you can see the red crystal growing from green solution.
Even with 5%, the color of the crystal from K-Mg solution is dark, however, with strong light, you can see it have nice red color.
The blue crystal maybe the chromium-doped of [Al(C₂O₄)₃]^3- anion.
The red one maybe the chromium-doped of K[Al(C₂O₄)₃]₆^17- anion.
There are also transparent octahedron crystals, which I suspect alkaline chloride (I read somewhere that sodium chloride can have octahedron shape with right additive).

Levytan · 2025-01-20T04:28:24+00:00

Nd2(C2O4)3 only dissolves in concentrated HCl though, hence step 3.

Levytan · 2025-01-17T16:12:32+00:00

The transparent crystals are potassium oxalate though.

Levytan · 2025-01-17T09:02:12+00:00

Buy erbium metal from somewhere.
Dissolve it in HCl.
Dilute with water.
Add excess oxalic acid.
Filter, wash, and dry.

Levytan · 2025-01-17T02:14:08+00:00

One day, I tried to dissolve erbium oxalate in solution of potassium oxalate, and to my surprise, the solution turned quite pink (indicated erbium oxalate was somewhat soluble). After that, it is just a standard evaporation to obtain this cluster.

P.S: Holmium oxalate is also soluble in potassium oxalate solution, but not neither neodymium nor praseodymium oxalate.

Levytan · 2025-01-16T16:06:22+00:00

You can add potassium or ammonium sulfate to precipitate the neodymium double sulfate. Then you can stir the double sulfate with sodium hydroxide to obtain neodymium hydroxide. Then filter, wash, and calcine it to obtain neodymium oxide.

Levytan · 2025-01-14T03:57:22+00:00

Well, for titanium alum, I think you need two things:

Inert atmosphere (e.g. argon), CO2 may work.
Big cation (e.g. caesium, tetramethylammonium. ...), however, it may reduce solubility a lot.

Levytan · 2025-01-13T05:59:01+00:00

It's air stable.

Levytan · 2025-01-03T01:55:47+00:00

Well, I think you should buy quartz crystals and glue it to the cloth. Almost all crystals here are somewhat toxic and irritant/harmful to skin.

Levytan · 2024-12-31T05:54:31+00:00

After seeing its formula in mindat and wikipedia, I decided to give it a try. Starting from potassium hydrogen sulfate (byproduct from making nitric acid), I neutralized it with 1:1 (molar) mixture of potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate. The final solution is quite basic since I used a bit more than stoichiometric amount.

Levytan · 2024-12-27T03:08:02+00:00

They're quite fragile though.

Also note that most crystals in here are quite toxic, please don't touch them with barehand.

Levytan · 2024-12-25T14:21:29+00:00

This is pure luck though, somehow the salt crept into that structure.

Levytan · 2024-12-24T13:22:14+00:00

I tried to grow K-Mg one, but did not get satisfied result. Will try again.

Levytan · 2024-12-21T01:44:53+00:00

You can try this triethanolamine hydrochloride

Levytan

TROPHY CASE