Mike Monett wrote: > I gently heated the remaining cs to boil away the water. It is my > understanding that a silver ion cannot exist in the free state, and > must combine to form particles. > So I assume there were no silver ions remaining after the jar dried. > (I still don't know where the needed electrons come from, but that > is another open issue.)
The electron comes from the anion that has an excess which gives the anion the negative ionic charge. When the water is evaporated the anions give up an electron, the cation take on an electron, and the compound (salt) is formed. If the salt is water soluble, the reverse happens when the salt is dissolved in water causing the dissociation into the respective ions. Here is more from the FAQ on silver-colloids.com: What happens to the silver ions in solution when the water is evaporated? Silver ions in a solution cannot exist without water, so when the water is evaporated the silver ions (cations) must combine with an available anion to form a compound. The predominant anions present in a silver colloid solution are hydroxide and carbonate. The compounds thus formed are silver hydroxide and silver carbonate. Silver hydroxide is unstable and reduces to silver oxide and hydrogen. The silver carbonate will reduce to silver oxide and carbon dioxide. The final compound that remains is silver oxide. This process begins as a single silver ion is forced to combine with a single anion forming a single molecule of the compound. The molecule has no ionic charge and therefore no repulsive force. The lack of repulsion causes the molecules to be attracted to each other by van der Waals' force of attraction which causes them to aggregate and form small particles of the compound. The size of the particle growth is limited by the reduced mobility of the molecules as the water evaporates. What remains is particles of silver oxide whose diameter is 1 - 3 nanometers. It is these particles which predominate in TEM images made of silver colloid solutions which have a high ionic content. > If this is true, it may have profound implications in our > understanding of the formation of particles during the production of > colloidal silver. There is no mystery to how particles are formed by electrolysis. The following description has been available on the silver-colloids.com website for several years. Here is the explanation from the FAQ on silver-colloids.com for those who have missed it. How does electrolysis produce silver particles? This discussion of electrolysis assumes two silver electrodes are placed in deionized water a small distance apart. The electrodes are connected to a low voltage DC power source (9-30 VDC). The electrode connected to the positive (+) terminal is referred to as the anode, the electrode connected to the negative (-) terminal is referred to as the cathode. When electric current passes through silver, some silver atoms at the interface with the water will loose an electron changing the atom into an ion. Whereas metallic silver is not water soluble, silver ions are water soluble, so the silver ions simply dissolve in the water producing an ionic silver solution. This is the electrolysis process. With the electrolysis process, some of the ions in close proximity to the anode will take on an electron from the current passing through and be changed from an ion back into an atom. These atoms are attracted by other similar atoms by van der Waal's force of attraction and thus form small metallic particles. This is how both ions and particles are produced by the electrolysis process. Typically 90% of the silver leaving the anode stays in the ionic form while about 10% forms into particles. Furthermore, a silver ion is not a group of atoms, but is a single silver atom that is missing a single electron. Silver ions remain dispersed in the solution from other silver ions due to their positive "ionic charge" which causes mutual repulsion. The silver particles do not have a positive charge, their charge is negative and is not due to "ionic charge" as are the ions, but have a zeta potential which causes the particle to act as though it had a negative charge. For more information on this subject see the paper titled "Ions, Atoms, and Charged Particles". > It means a single ion is not enough to start the process. We need to > somehow bring two or four silver ions together at the same time in > order to start the process of particle formation. Two silver ions will not get close together until an electron is added to each ion to convert it back to an atom. Only atoms can join together to form particles. Atoms do not have a charge and thus no mutual repulsion is created. Ions in close proximity will have a repulsive force of well over one hundred thousand G-forces causing them to mutually repel each other. There is no force strong enough to overcome this force. Brownian motion is not sufficient. frank key -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. Instructions for unsubscribing may be found at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: [email protected] Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
