Amalgam (chemistry) inorganic chemistry. With water, it decomposes into concentrated sodium hydroxide solution, hydrogen and mercury, which can then return to the chloralkali process anew. If absolutely water-free alcohol is used instead of water, an alkoxide of sodium is produced instead of the alkali solution. Aluminium can form an amalgam through a reaction with mercury. Aluminium amalgam may be prepared by either grinding aluminium pellets or wire in mercury, or by allowing aluminium wire or foil to react with a solution of mercuric chloride. This amalgam is used as a reagent to reduce compounds, such as the reduction of imines to amines.
Inorganic chemistry based on their properties. Partly the classification focuses on the position in the periodic table of the heaviest element (the element with the highest atomic weight) in the compound, partly by grouping compounds by their structural similarities. When studying inorganic compounds, one often encounters parts of the different classes of inorganic chemistry (an organometallic compound is characterized by its coordination chemistry, and may show interesting solid state properties). Different classifications are: Classical coordination compounds feature metals bound to "lone pairs" of electrons residing on the main group atoms of ligands such as HO, NH, Cl, and CN. In modern coordination