In the experiment in this video the guy makes suspended Iron nano particles simply by mixing polyphenols from green tea with a dissolved solution of
an Iron salt.
I wanted to know what other metal salts would this method work with and also could I use this method to make boron nano particles by mixing borax or
boric acid with green tea.
Right now I don't have the article in my hands, but I've read about reduction of copper and some other more noble metals using tea. D4RR3N - 20-9-2015 at 10:46
Right now I don't have the article in my hands, but I've read about reduction of copper and some other more noble metals using tea.
Yes I have read it works for gold, they were using this method to produce gold nano particles to target cancer cells. D4RR3N - 20-9-2015 at 11:38
As I had some borax and green tea kicking about I mixed a solution of both together and observed no color change unlike the reaction in the vid. Not
sure if we would expect a color change in all instances.
aga - 20-9-2015 at 14:44
The Metals are complexing with the polyphenols in the Tea, and there are some rules that determine what works and what doesn't.
Borax isn't like iron (iii) chloride because the Iron is in the +3 oxidation state and in sodium tetraborate the Boron is in the ...
Oh dear. All fell to bits already. Feck.
Can some proper chemist please explain what not-happens with borax and green tea, please.Dan Vizine - 21-9-2015 at 07:34
You simply don't have a reductant in tea with a sufficiently high reducing potential to touch borax. The metal salt examples of things that will
produce reduced products all have modest positive reduction potentials. Just look all a table of standard electrode potentials.
If you had produced boron, it would be grey-black (and also impossible, since you can't do it in an aqueous solution because the hydrogen in the water
would be reduced first).
