native metal

Examples of native metal in the following topics:

• Occurrence of Metals

  • A native metal is any metal that is found in its metallic form in nature, either pure or as an alloy.
  • Metals that can be found as native deposits singly and/or in alloys include antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, indium, iron, nickel, selenium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, and zinc.
  • This is why only the less reactive metals such as gold and platinum are found as native metals.
  • Native metals were prehistoric man's only access to metal.
  • Describe the characteristics of metal alloys and the natural occurence of native metals.

• Extractive Metallurgy

  • Metal ores are generally oxides, sulfides and silicates of "native" metals (such as native copper) that are not commonly concentrated in the Earth's crust.
  • Extractive metallurgy is the practice of removing valuable metals from an ore and refining the extracted raw metals into a purer form.
  • In order to convert a metal oxide or sulfide to a purer metal, the ore must be reduced physically, chemically, or electrolytically.
  • Ore bodies often contain more than one valuable metal.
  • Additionally, a concentrate may contain more than one valuable metal.

• Titanium, Chromium, and Manganese

  • Titanium is a strong, lustrous transition metal.
  • Titanium metal has two very important and useful properties: it is resistant to corrosion and it has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal.
  • Following this first discovery, small amounts of native (free) chromium metal have been discovered in rare minerals, but these are not used commercially.
  • Chromium metal has proven to be highly valuable due to its high corrosion resistance and hardness, particularly when steel is combined with metallic chromium to form stainless steel.
  • It is a metal with important industrial uses, particularly in stainless steels.

• Silver

  • Silver has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal.
  • Silver is a soft, white, lustrous transition metal.
  • It has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal.
  • The metal occurs naturally in its pure, free form (native silver).
  • Alkaline solutions of silver nitrate can be reduced to silver metal by reducing sugars such as glucose.

• Elements and Compounds

  • The chemical elements are divided into the metals, the metalloids, and the non-metals.
  • Metals, typically found on the left side of the periodic table, are:
  • In contrast, non-metals, found on the right side of the periodic table (to the right of the staircase), are:
  • Metalloids have some characteristics of metals and some characteristics of non-metals.
  • Among the more common of such "native elements" are copper, silver, gold, and sulfur.

• Bonding in Metals: The Electron Sea Model

  • Metallic bonding may be described as the sharing of free electrons among a lattice of positively charged metal ions.
  • Metallic bonding may be described as the sharing of free electrons among a lattice of positively charged metal ions.
  • While ionic bonds join metals to nonmetals, and covalent bonds join nonmetals to nonmetals, metallic bonds are responsible for the bonding between metal atoms.
  • The characteristics of metallic bonds explain a number of the unique properties of metals:
  • Metals are shiny.

• Metal Exchange Reactions

  • Alternative methods of preparing a wide variety of organometallic compounds generally involve an exchange reaction in which a given metal is either moved to a new location or replaced by a new metal, which may include B, Al, Ti, V, Fe, Ni, Cu, Mo, Ru, Pd, Sn, Pt, Hg & Pb.

• General Properties of Metals

  • Metals are usually malleable, ductile, and shiny.
  • Metals are shiny and lustrous with a high density.
  • For example, hitting a metal with a hammer will "dent" the metal, not shatter it into pieces.
  • This is very instrumental in the conductivity of the metal.
  • Sodium metal is soft enough to be cut with a plastic knife.

• Metallic Crystals

  • Metallic crystals are held together by metallic bonds, electrostatic interactions between cations and delocalized electrons.
  • These interactions are called metallic bonds.
  • Atoms in metals are arranged like closely-packed spheres, and two packing patterns are particularly common: body-centered cubic, wherein each metal is surrounded by eight equivalent metals, and face-centered cubic, in which the metals are surrounded by six neighboring atoms.
  • Some metals (the alkali and alkaline earth metals) have low density, low hardness, and low melting points.
  • The high density of most metals is due to the tightly packed crystal lattice of the metallic structure.

• Metal Cations that Act as Lewis Acids

  • Ligands create a complex when forming coordinate bonds with transition metals ions; the transition metal ion acts as a Lewis acid, and the ligand acts as a Lewis base.
  • Nearly all compounds formed by the transition metals can be viewed as collections of the Lewis bases—or ligands—bound to the metal, which functions as the Lewis acid.
  • One coordination chemistry's applications is using Lewis bases to modify the activity and selectivity of metal catalysts in order to create useful metal-ligand complexes in biochemistry and medicine.
  • Examples of several metals (V, Mn, Re, Fe, Ir) in coordination complexes with various ligands.
  • All these metals act as Lewis acids, accepting electron pairs from their ligands.