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.
Organosilver chemistry η-alkene complex. Silver is also present in other carbon-carbon bond skeletal rearrangements such as the quadricyclane to norbornadiene rearrangement, the cubane to cuneane rearrangement and the rearrangement of the cyclobutadiene dimer to cyclooctatetraene. Organosilver chemistry Organosilver chemistry in chemistry is the study of organometallic compounds containing a carbon to silver chemical bond and the study of silver as catalyst in organic reactions. In the group 11 elements silver is the element below copper. The chemistries have much in common but organosilver catalysis is much less common (mostly academic study) than organocopper chemistry due both to the relatively high price of