Difference between revisions of "Rutile"

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* [[Titanium]] is supposedly especially abundant on the moon so future [[gem-gum products]] on the moon may feature a lot of rutile for structural parts.  
 
* [[Titanium]] is supposedly especially abundant on the moon so future [[gem-gum products]] on the moon may feature a lot of rutile for structural parts.  
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== Related ==
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The emenets in the [[Silicon]] group like to kake on rutile structure too. <br>
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A lot of [[neo-polymorph]]s may become possible by swapping out some of the titan for other compatible elements.
  
 
== External links ==
 
== External links ==

Revision as of 00:21, 13 April 2021

Rutile is a polymorph of titanium dioxide (TiO2)
It may be of peculiar interest because:

  • it contains the element titanium (Ti) whitch is one of the more abundant elements in earth crust.
  • it has a reasonably high hardness (mohs 6.0 to 6.5)
  • it features a reasonably simple (tetragonal) crystal lattice (in fact it's the defining minearal for the rutile structure)
  • with the rutile structure it features the exact same structure as stishovite (a peculiarly interesting SiO2 polymorph) but given it occurs naturally in high quantities (unlike stishovite) it likely has a higher thermodynamic stability. That is: it's less prone to diffusion into a more stable polymorph at higher temperatures.

Given both rutile and stishovite feature the same crystal structure it may be possible to mechanosynthesize checkerboard neo-polymorphic transitions by replacing some Ti with with Si in a regular pattern.

Other polymorphs of (TiO2)

Another polymorph of (TiO2) is anatase (mohs 5.5 to 6.0).
It also has a simple tetragonal crystal lattice but different from the rutile structure in that the unit cell is a bit bigger.

A third polymorph of (TiO2) is brookite (mohs 5.5 to 6.0).
It also has a bigger unit cell than rutile and has the lower orthorombic crystal structure symmetry which may make it a bit less interesting as a potential base material.

Misc

  • All (TiO2) polymorphs have a high refractive index

Potential elements for controlled mechanosynthetic substitution for doping or the creation of neo-polymorphs include:

  • iron Fe (extremely common) – a common natural impurity of rutile
  • niobium Nb (less common) – a common natural impurity of rutile
  • tantalum Ta (extremely rare) – a common natural impurity of rutile
  • possibly silicon Si – since it forms an oxide with exactly the same crystal structure as rutile (stishovite)

Elements that also shares the rutile structure:

  • the germanium dioxide mineral argutite (wikipedia) (germanium is one of the more rare elements though)
  • the tin dioxide minearl cassiereite (wikipedia) (tin is a bit more common than germanium)
  • ...

Interplanetary applications (Moon)

  • Titanium is supposedly especially abundant on the moon so future gem-gum products on the moon may feature a lot of rutile for structural parts.

Related

The emenets in the Silicon group like to kake on rutile structure too.
A lot of neo-polymorphs may become possible by swapping out some of the titan for other compatible elements.

External links