Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Phosphorescent Unknown Compound

QuicksilverHg - 2-5-2020 at 11:54

Greetings,
A few years back I purchased a small, unlabeled bottle at an estate sale. Among the possessions I also found gold mining maps, so my bias was that the unknown orange/red solid was chloroauric acid evaporated to gold (III) chloride. A while late I reconstituted this solid, producing a green-yellow liquid reminiscent of green anti-freeze.
Last week I successfully made tin (II) chloride after failing some years back (I granulated the tin instead of using shot, the process still took around 15 hours) and performed a spot test. In retrospect, the spot test did not precipitate gold powder; it remained yellow but I convinced myself it was due to high concentration.
In any regard I evaporated the solution to near dryness to produce a light orange solid, similar to seafoam in texture. I planned to mix this 'gold' solution with potassium ferrocyanide and do some gold plating. Out of curiosity I shone my UV light on the crystals, and to my surprise they lit up yellow, not quite like a highlighter (flouresceine) does, but still considerable. The compound also holds the charge for a beif moment, not quite a second but the yellow emission after UV source has been removed tells me this is phosphorescent.
Captions: Fourth attempt to post so just the ten second video of phosphorescence.
Any help would be appreciated!


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