Aluminium is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals; about one-third that of steel. It has a great affinity towards oxygen, forming a protective layer of oxide on the surface when exposed to air. Aluminium visually resembles silver, both in its color and in its great ability to reflect light. It is soft, nonmagnetic and ductile. It has one stable isotope: 27Al, which is highly abundant, making aluminium the twelfth-most common element in the universe. The radioactivity of 26Al is used in radiometric dating.
Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(OH)), mixed with the two iron oxides goethite (FeO(OH)) and haematite (Fe2O3), the aluminium clay mineral kaolinite (Al2Si2O5(OH)4) and small amounts of anatase (TiO2) and ilmenite (FeTiO3 or FeO.TiO2). Bauxite appears dull in luster and is reddish-brown, white, or tan.
Hydroxide is a diatomic anion with chemical formula OH−. It consists of an oxygen and hydrogen atom held together by a single covalent bond, and carries a negative electric charge. It is an important but usually minor constituent of water. It functions as a base, a ligand, a nucleophile, and a catalyst. The hydroxide ion forms salts, some of which dissociate in aqueous solution, liberating solvated hydroxide ions. Sodium hydroxide is a multi-million-ton per annum commodity chemical. The corresponding electrically neutral compound HO• is the hydroxyl radical. The corresponding covalently bound group –OH of atoms is the hydroxy group. Both the hydroxide ion and hydroxy group are nucleophiles and can act as catalysts in organic chemistry.
Scandium is a chemical element with the symbol Sc and atomic number 21. It is a silvery-white metallic d-block element. Historically, it has been classified as a rare-earth element, together with yttrium and the lanthanides. It was discovered in 1879 by spectral analysis of the minerals euxenite and gadolinite from Scandinavia.
Aluminium oxide (or Aluminium(III) oxide) is a chemical compound of aluminium and oxygen with the chemical formula Al2O3. It is the most commonly occurring of several aluminium oxides, and specifically identified as aluminium oxide. It is commonly called alumina and may also be called aloxide, aloxite, or alundum in various forms and applications. It occurs naturally in its crystalline polymorphic phase α-Al2O3 as the mineral corundum, varieties of which form the precious gemstones ruby and sapphire. Al2O3 is significant in its use to produce aluminium metal, as an abrasive owing to its hardness, and as a refractory material owing to its high melting point.
Aluminium hydroxide, Al(OH)3, is found in nature as the mineral gibbsite and its three much rarer polymorphs: bayerite, doyleite, and nordstrandite. Aluminium hydroxide is amphoteric, i.e., it has both basic and acidic properties. Closely related are aluminium oxide hydroxide, AlO(OH), and aluminium oxide or alumina, the latter of which is also amphoteric. These compounds together are the major components of the aluminium ore bauxite. Aluminium hydroxide also forms a gelatinous precipitate in water.
Gibbsite, Al(OH)3, is one of the mineral forms of aluminium hydroxide. It is often designated as γ-Al(OH)3 (but sometimes as α-Al(OH)3.). It is also sometimes called hydrargillite (or hydrargyllite).
Iron(III) oxide or ferric oxide is the inorganic compound with the formula Fe2O3. It is one of the three main oxides of iron, the other two being iron(II) oxide (FeO), which is rare; and iron(II,III) oxide (Fe3O4), which also occurs naturally as the mineral magnetite. As the mineral known as hematite, Fe2O3 is the main source of iron for the steel industry. Fe2O3 is readily attacked by acids. Iron(III) oxide is often called rust, and to some extent this label is useful, because rust shares several properties and has a similar composition; however, in chemistry, rust is considered an ill-defined material, described as Hydrous ferric oxide.
The Bayer process is the principal industrial means of refining bauxite to produce alumina (aluminium oxide) and was developed by Carl Josef Bayer. Bauxite, the most important ore of aluminium, contains only 30–60% aluminium oxide (Al2O3), the rest being a mixture of silica, various iron oxides, and titanium dioxide. The aluminium oxide must be further purified before it can be refined into aluminium metal.
Diaspore – also called diasporite, empholite, kayserite, or tanatarite – is an aluminium hydroxide oxide mineral, α-AlO(OH), crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and isomorphous with goethite. It occurs sometimes as flattened crystals, but usually as lamellar or scaly masses, the flattened surface being a direction of perfect cleavage on which the lustre is markedly pearly in character. It is colorless or greyish-white, yellowish, sometimes violet in color, and varies from translucent to transparent. It may be readily distinguished from other colorless transparent minerals with a perfect cleavage and pearly luster by its greater hardness of 6.5–7. Its specific gravity is 3.4. When heated before the blowpipe, it decrepitates violently, breaking up into white pearly scales.
Boehmite or böhmite is an aluminium oxide hydroxide mineral, a component of the aluminium ore bauxite. It is dimorphous with diaspore. It crystallizes in the orthorhombic dipyramidal system and is typically massive in habit. It is white with tints of yellow, green, brown or red due to impurities. It has a vitreous to pearly luster, a Mohs hardness of 3 to 3.5 and a specific gravity of 3.00 to 3.07. It is colorless in thin section, optically biaxial positive with refractive indices of nα = 1.644 - 1.648, nβ = 1.654 - 1.657 and nγ = 1.661 - 1.668.
Aluminium chloride, also known as aluminium trichloride, is an inorganic compound with the formula AlCl3. It forms a hexahydrate with the formula [Al(H2O)6]Cl3, containing six water molecules of hydration. Both the anhydrous form and the hexahydrate are colourless crystals, but samples are often contaminated with iron(III) chloride, giving them a yellow colour.
In chemistry, an aluminate is a compound containing an oxyanion of aluminium, such as sodium aluminate. In the naming of inorganic compounds, it is a suffix that indicates a polyatomic anion with a central aluminium atom.
Iron(III) oxide-hydroxide or ferric oxyhydroxide is the chemical compound of iron, oxygen, and hydrogen with formula FeO(OH).
Lithium aluminate, also called lithium aluminium oxide, is an inorganic chemical compound, an aluminate of lithium. In microelectronics, lithium aluminate is considered as a lattice matching substrate for gallium nitride. In nuclear technology, lithium aluminate is of interest as a solid tritium breeder material, for preparing tritium fuel for nuclear fusion. Lithium aluminate is a layered double hydroxide (LDH) with a crystal structure resembling that of hydrotalcite. Lithium aluminate solubility at high pH is much lower than that of aluminium oxides. In the conditioning of low- and intermediate level radioactive waste (LILW), lithium nitrate is sometimes used as additive to cement to minimise aluminium corrosion at high pH and subsequent hydrogen production. Indeed, upon addition of lithium nitrate to cement, a passive layer of LiH(AlO
2)
2 · 5 H
2O is formed onto the surface of metallic aluminium waste immobilised in mortar. The lithium aluminate layer is insoluble in cement pore water and protects the underlying aluminium oxide covering the metallic aluminium from dissolution at high pH. It is also a pore filler. This hinders the aluminium oxidation by the protons of water and reduces the hydrogen evolution rate by a factor of 10.
Aluminium carbonate (Al2(CO3)3), is a carbonate of aluminium. It is not well characterized; one authority says that simple carbonates of aluminium are not known. However related compounds are known, such as the basic sodium aluminium carbonate mineral dawsonite (NaAlCO3(OH)2) and hydrated basic aluminium carbonate minerals scarbroite (Al5(CO3)(OH)13•5(H2O)) and hydroscarbroite (Al14(CO3)3(OH)36•nH2O).
Scandium compounds are compounds containing the element scandium. The chemistry of scandium is almost completely dominated by the trivalent ion, Sc3+, due to its electron configuration, [Ar] 3d14s2. The radii of M3+ ions in the table below indicate that the chemical properties of scandium ions have more in common with yttrium ions than with aluminium ions. In part because of this similarity, scandium is often classified as a lanthanide-like element.
Pseudoboehmite is an aluminium compound with the chemical composition AlO(OH). It consists of finely crystalline boehmite. However, the water content is higher than in boehmite.
In organic chemistry, the Ziegler process is a method for producing fatty alcohols from ethylene using an organoaluminium compound. The reaction produces linear primary alcohols with an even numbered carbon chain. The process uses an aluminum compound to oligomerize ethylene and allow the resulting alkyl group to be oxygenated. The usually targeted products are fatty alcohols, which are otherwise derived from natural fats and oils. Fatty alcohols are used in food and chemical processing. They are useful due to their amphipathic nature. The synthesis route is named after Karl Ziegler, who described the process in 1955.
Aluminium (or aluminum) combines characteristics of pre- and post-transition metals. Since it has few available electrons for metallic bonding, like its heavier group 13 congeners, it has the characteristic physical properties of a post-transition metal, with longer-than-expected interatomic distances. Furthermore, as Al3+ is a small and highly charged cation, it is strongly polarizing and aluminium compounds tend towards covalency; this behaviour is similar to that of beryllium (Be2+), an example of a diagonal relationship. However, unlike all other post-transition metals, the underlying core under aluminium's valence shell is that of the preceding noble gas, whereas for gallium and indium it is that of the preceding noble gas plus a filled d-subshell, and for thallium and nihonium it is that of the preceding noble gas plus filled d- and f-subshells. Hence, aluminium does not suffer the effects of incomplete shielding of valence electrons by inner electrons from the nucleus that its heavier congeners do. Aluminium's electropositive behavior, high affinity for oxygen, and highly negative standard electrode potential are all more similar to those of scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, and actinium, which have ds2 configurations of three valence electrons outside a noble gas core: aluminium is the most electropositive metal in its group. Aluminium also bears minor similarities to the metalloid boron in the same group; AlX3 compounds are valence isoelectronic to BX3 compounds (they have the same valence electronic structure), and both behave as Lewis acids and readily form adducts. Additionally, one of the main motifs of boron chemistry is regular icosahedral structures, and aluminium forms an important part of many icosahedral quasicrystal alloys, including the Al–Zn–Mg class.
