# detection of silver oxide



## chemguy (Nov 24, 2012)

Can anyone please suggest whether its silver oxide or not?


----------



## sena (Nov 24, 2012)

chemguy said:


> Can anyone please suggest whether its silver oxide or not?



Add a drop of nitric and check with and add drop of hcl for white precipitate (silver chloride).


----------



## chemguy (Nov 24, 2012)

i messed up while preparing silver nitrate from nitric acid.
I dissolved silver into nitric acid to get silver nitrate solution.
after i prepared i solution i tried to eveporate excess water by evaporation and kept the solution for a week at room temp to crystallize. after i week i received good amount of crystals and then i added nitric to the remaining solution to receive more crystals and then in order to dry it up i heated the solution in induction heater. thats where i messed up red NO2 gas started evolving out and my material started decomposing, so i tried to heat the material to a temperature above 200, in order to decompose it complete.
i just wanna know whether from appearance or color can some1 say whether its silver oxide or not and has it been converted to any other material.


----------



## MysticColby (Nov 25, 2012)

wait, so you dissolved silver then evaporated the liquid to get silver nitrate crystals then heated to decompose the silver nitrate to silver?
1) you're not going to eliminate a lot of impurities (such as copper)
2) silver nitrate decomposes at 444ºC (831ºF)
3) I would expect some amount of volatility in silver nitrate, so you'd lose silver
4) decomposing silver nitrate would release NO2 which is very toxic

If you were decomposing silver nitrate, it would also decompose silver oxide (it decomposes at 280ºC)


----------

