Gold
Gold is a chemical element; its chemical symbol is Au and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a bright-metallic-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal, a group 11 element, and one of the noble metals. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements, being the second lowest in the reactivity series, with only platinum ranked as less reactive. Gold is solid under standard conditions.
Gold often occurs as the free element, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver, naturally alloyed with other metals such as copper, platinum, and palladium, as well as mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium.
Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia, forming a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is insoluble in nitric acid alone, which dissolves silver and base metals, a property long used to refine gold and confirm the presence of gold in metallic substances, giving rise to the term "acid test". Gold dissolves in alkaline solutions of cyanide, which are used in mining and electroplating. Gold also dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, and as the gold acts simply as a solute, this is not a chemical reaction.
A relatively rare element when compared to silver, gold is a precious metal that has been used for coinage, jewelry, and other works of art throughout recorded history. In the past, a gold standard was often implemented as a monetary policy. Most gold coins ceased to be minted as a circulating currency in the 1930s, and the world gold standard was abandoned for a fiat currency system after the Nixon shock measures of 1971.
In 2023, the world's largest gold producer was China, followed by Russia and Australia., a total of around 201,296 tonnes of gold exist above ground. If all of this gold were put together into a cube shape, each of its sides would measure. The world's consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. Gold's high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, as well as conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion-resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices. Gold is also used in infrared shielding, the production of colored glass, gold leafing, and tooth restoration. Auranofin is a gold-containing drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
Etymology
Gold is cognate with similar words in many Germanic languages, deriving via Proto-Germanic *gulþą from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃-.The symbol Au is from the Latin aurum. The Proto-Indo-European ancestor of aurum was *h₂é-h₂us-o-, meaning. This word is derived from the same root as *h₂éu̯sōs, the ancestor of the Latin word aurora. This etymological relationship is presumably behind the frequent claim in scientific publications that aurum meant.
Characteristics
Gold is the most malleable metal. It can be drawn into a wire of single-atom width, and then stretched considerably before it breaks. Such nanowires distort via the formation, reorientation, and migration of dislocations and crystal twins without noticeable hardening. A single gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet of, and an avoirdupois ounce into. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become semi-transparent. Light transmitted through gold appears greenish-blue, because gold strongly reflects yellow and red. Such semi-transparent sheets also strongly reflect infrared light, making them useful as infrared shields in the visors of heat-resistant suits and in sun visors for spacesuits. Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity.Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm3, almost identical to that of tungsten at 19.25 g/cm3; as such, tungsten has been used in the counterfeiting of gold bars, such as by plating a tungsten bar with gold. By comparison, the density of lead is 11.34 g/cm3, and that of the densest element, osmium, is.
Color
Whereas most metals are gray or silvery white, gold is slightly reddish-yellow. This color is a well-known example of relativistic quantum chemistry. The 5d-6s band gap is greatly reduced when relativity is included in theoretical calculations, and this is thought to account for the yellow color, although a full comparison of the absorption spectrum between the relativistic and non-relativistic cases has not been performed as of 2004. Similar effects impart a golden hue to metallic caesium.Common colored gold alloys include the distinctive eighteen-karat rose gold created by the addition of copper. Alloys containing palladium or nickel are also important in commercial jewelry as these produce white gold alloys. Fourteen-karat gold-copper alloy is nearly identical in color to certain bronze alloys, and both may be used to produce police and other badges. Fourteen- and eighteen-karat gold alloys with silver alone appear greenish-yellow and are referred to as green gold. Blue gold can be made by alloying with iron, and purple gold can be made by alloying with aluminium. Less commonly, addition of manganese, indium, and other elements can produce more unusual colors of gold for various applications.
Colloidal gold, used by electron-microscopists, is red if the particles are small; larger particles of colloidal gold are blue.
Isotopes
Gold has only one stable isotope,, which is also its only naturally occurring isotope, so gold is both a mononuclidic and monoisotopic element. Thirty-six radioisotopes have been synthesized, ranging in atomic mass from 169 to 205. The most stable of these is with a half-life of 186.1 days. The least stable is, which decays by proton emission with a half-life of 30 μs. Most of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses below 197 decay by some combination of proton emission, α decay, and β+ decay. The exceptions are, which decays by electron capture, and, which decays most often by electron capture with a minor β− decay path. All of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses above 197 decay by β− decay.At least 32 nuclear isomers have also been characterized, ranging in atomic mass from 170 to 200. Within that range, only,,,, and do not have isomers. Gold's most stable isomer is with a half-life of 2.27 days. Gold's least stable isomer is with a half-life of only 7 ns. has three decay paths: β+ decay, isomeric transition, and alpha decay. No other isomer or isotope of gold has three decay paths.
Synthesis
The possible production of gold from a more common element, such as lead, has long been a subject of human inquiry, and the ancient and medieval discipline of alchemy often focused on it; however, the transmutation of the chemical elements did not become possible until the understanding of nuclear physics in the 20th century. The first synthesis of gold was conducted by Japanese physicist Hantaro Nagaoka, who synthesized gold from mercury in 1924 by neutron bombardment. An American team, working without knowledge of Nagaoka's prior study, conducted the same experiment in 1941, achieving the same result and showing that the isotopes of gold produced by it were all radioactive. In 1980, Glenn Seaborg transmuted several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Gold can be manufactured in a nuclear reactor, but doing so is highly impractical and would cost far more than the value of the gold that is produced.Chemistry
Although gold is the most noble of the noble metals, it still forms many diverse compounds. The oxidation state of gold in its compounds ranges from −1 to +5, but Au and Au dominate its chemistry. Au, referred to as the aurous ion, is the most common oxidation state with soft ligands such as thioethers, thiolates, and organophosphines. Au compounds are typically linear. A good example is, which is the soluble form of gold encountered in mining. The binary gold halides, such as AuCl, form zigzag polymeric chains, again featuring linear coordination at Au. Most drugs based on gold are Au derivatives.Au is a common oxidation state, and is illustrated by gold chloride,. The gold atom centers in Au complexes, like other d8 compounds, are typically square planar, with chemical bonds that have both covalent and ionic character. Gold chloride is also known, an example of a mixed-valence complex.
Gold does not react with oxygen at any temperature and, up to 100 °C, is resistant to attack from ozone:
Some free halogens react to form the corresponding gold halides. Gold is strongly attacked by fluorine at dull-red heat to form gold fluoride. Powdered gold reacts with chlorine at 180 °C to form gold chloride. Gold reacts with bromine at 140 °C to form a combination of gold bromide and gold bromide AuBr, but reacts very slowly with iodine to form gold iodide AuI:
Gold does not react with sulfur directly, but gold sulfide can be made by passing hydrogen sulfide through a dilute solution of gold chloride or chlorauric acid.
Unlike sulfur, phosphorus reacts directly with gold at elevated temperatures to produce gold phosphide.
Gold readily dissolves in mercury at room temperature to form an amalgam, and forms alloys with many other metals at higher temperatures. These alloys can be produced to modify the hardness and other metallurgical properties, to control melting point or to create exotic colors.
Gold is unaffected by most acids. It does not react with hydrofluoric, hydrochloric, hydrobromic, hydriodic, sulfuric, or nitric acid. It does react with selenic acid, and is dissolved by aqua regia, a 1:3 mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. Nitric acid oxidizes the metal to +3 ions, but only in minute amounts, typically undetectable in the pure acid because of the chemical equilibrium of the reaction. However, the ions are removed from the equilibrium by hydrochloric acid, forming ions, or chloroauric acid, thereby enabling further oxidation:
Gold is similarly unaffected by most bases. It does not react with aqueous, solid, or molten sodium or potassium hydroxide. It does, however, react with sodium or potassium cyanide under alkaline conditions when oxygen is present to form soluble complexes.
Common oxidation states of gold include +1 and +3. Gold ions in solution are readily reduced and precipitated as metal by adding any other metal as the reducing agent. The added metal is oxidized and dissolves, allowing the gold to be displaced from solution and be recovered as a solid precipitate.