You might also try fusing anhydrous sodium borate (borax) and submitting it to electrolysis.
Using copper, or nickel alloy based electrodes and a propane brazing torch to melt the stuff (be aware if you get borax its likely to be hydrated, and
will appear to melt at first, then to puff up into a very large volume for a small amount of starting material, the density is really very low in this
state, its like styrofoam, only not nearly so heavy and crumbles with very little effort. Takes quite some heat to fuse the anhydrous salt, its best
first dehydrated then reground, or you'll be forever adding more to the crucible and melting it, squashing it down then melting it again.
Have tried it with copper electrodes and with a nickel alloy based one, better results with copper wire. I did this, and ran a 35 amp, 5v current
through it, and also at 16 amp 10 or 15 volts (can't remember which of the latter now) into the molten anhydrous borax and got back several materials.
One of them, of course was unreacted borax, one of them was what I suspect was borax, doped with copper fused into a hard glass-like material, a pale,
translucent blue and quite attractive. The last was chunks of an extremely hard, reddish brown, ruddy colored material which I suspect is amorphous
boron, produced in the fine state via the electrolysis and fused by the torch. This last is extremely tough, hard although brittle if whacked with a
hammer, but steel tools wouldn't put a mark on it, the only thing I managed to make any marks on this material in the state of chunks, was to go at it
with a tungsten carbide tipped cutting tool, which would scratch it.
The last, I am fairly confident is one or other of the boron allotropes, vitrified in its finely divided form to a solid lump. Some chemical tests
need to be done on it before I'm completely sure, and as of yet, I've not been able to duplicate the formation of the blue vitreous or crystalline
material. That stuff would look quite good actually, cut and polished then given a thin coating of something like water glass to protect it.
I've also tried using zinc-plated Fe electrodes on an aq. solution of borax and got back a black, fine material which as of yet has not been separated
from the borax, after prolonged electrolysis. It also plated out onto one of the electrodes, one ended up with a thin, dark colored covering not
unlike that produced with other galvanized metal electrodes used to submit aqueous manganese sulfate solution to electrolysis.
I'll have to take a look at that black layer now, since it settled out onto the top of a layer of borax which had precipitated out of solution.
There was at one point during electrolysis, a rather odd smell. Like gone off milk, sour, not acrid, just with a distinctly rotten tang. Not much of
it, whatever it was, but it was foul enough to send me reaching for my mask and ventilating the area. Didn't have to be much, quite a sickening
stench, never smelled anything like that before, other than putrid dairy produce. Sour milk, or rotting natural yoghurt. Real bad smell, I'd say worse
than some of the middling nasty sulfur compounds by a fair stretch. Glad there wasn't much of it being produced and that the smell was faint, because
it fair made my stomach twitch.
[Edited on 8-4-2017 by tsathoggua1]
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