Discovery and Synthesis
Zinc(II) hydride was first synthesised in 1947 by Hermann Schlesinger, via a reaction between dimethylzinc and lithium aluminium hydride; a process which was somewhat hazardous due to the pyrophoric nature of Zn(CH3)2.
- Zn(CH3)2 + 2 LiAlH4 → ZnH2 + 2 LiAlH3CH3
Later methods were predominantly salt metathesis reactions between zinc halides and alkali metal hydrides, which are significantly safer. Examples include:
- ZnBr2 + 2LiH → ZnH2 + 2LiBr
- ZnI2 + 2 NaH + → ZnH2 + 2NaI
- ZnI2 + 2 LiAlH4 → ZnH2 + AlH3 + 2LiI
Small quantities of gaseous zinc(II) hydride have also been produced by laser ablation of zinc under a hydrogen atmosphere and other high energy techniques. These methods have been used to assess it's gas phase properties.
Read more about this topic: Zinc Hydride
Famous quotes containing the words discovery and/or synthesis:
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“It is in this impossibility of attaining to a synthesis of the inner life and the outward that the inferiority of the biographer to the novelist lies. The biographer quite clearly sees Peel, say, seated on his bench while his opponents overwhelm him with perhaps undeserved censure. He sees him motionless, miserable, his head bent on his breast. He asks himself: “What is he thinking?” and he knows nothing.”
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967)