Amalgam (chemistry) Amalgam (chemistry) An amalgam is an alloy of mercury with another metal, which may be a liquid, a soft paste or a solid, depending upon the proportion of mercury. These alloys are formed through metallic bonding, with the electrostatic attractive force of the conduction electrons working to bind all the positively charged metal ions together into a crystal lattice structure. Almost all metals can form amalgams with mercury, the notable exceptions being iron, platinum, tungsten, and tantalum. Silver-mercury amalgams are important in dentistry, and gold-mercury amalgam is used in the extraction of gold from ore. Zinc amalgam finds use in
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