Mercury silvering Mercury silvering Mercury silvering or fire gilding is a silvering technique for applying a thin layer of precious metal such as silver or gold (mercury gilding) to a base metal object. The process was invented during the Middle Ages and is documented in Vannoccio Biringuccio's 1540 book "De la pirotechnia". An amalgam of mercury and the precious metal is prepared and applied to the object which is then heated, sometimes in oil, vaporizing most of the mercury. The technique is dangerous since mercury is highly toxic, especially in its vapor phase. Mercury silvering can be detected through a variety of
Mercury(II) hydride a mixture of petroleum ether and tetrahydrofuran. In 1993 Legay-Sommaire announced HgH production in cryogenic argon and krypton matrices with a KrF laser. In 2004, solid HgH was definitively synthesized and consequentially analysed, by Xuefeng Wang and Lester Andrews, by direct matrix isolation reaction of excited mercury with molecular hydrogen. In 2005, gaseous HgH was synthesized by Alireza Shayesteh "et al", by the direct gas-phase reaction of excited mercury with molecular hydrogen at standard temperature; and Xuefeng Wang and Lester Andrews determined the structure of solid mercury HgH, to be a molecular solid. Mercury(II) hydride Mercury(II) hydride (systematically named mercurane(2)