Talk:Gold chalcogenides

This article doesn't explain what Gold chalcogenides is. There are other terms in the article which are undefined. For a layman, this article doesn't make any sense. RickK 02:07 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Fixed this. Hope it is better. I do question the last edit, however --- A gold chalcogenide is not always a mineral. I'll attempt a fix

Proposed merge

I am not always in favor of merges, but this topic is such a tiny niche that the content might be more useful in the article on gold. The chalcogenides of gold are extremely rare and usually unstable (hence gold does not tarnish). At least that is my impression.--Smokefoot (talk) 18:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is only true for the oxide and sulfide. Gold tellurides are actually quite stable and are the only gold compounds found in nature (see the tellurium article, and Telluride, Colorado for a town named after them). There are several different AuTe minerals, in fact, since the compound is not stoichiometric (it is actually a metallic conductor). This is possible because Au and Te have similar electronegativities; 2.1 for Te, 2.54 for Au.

Gold tellurides are highly notable because they contain two of the rarest elements on Earth occuring in the same mineral! So I don't think your proposed merger is a good idea.

As far as selenides go, they don't occur in nature but I would expect them to be more stable than the oxides and sulfides (though less so than the tellurides), since Se is more metallic than S. Se and Au have almost identical electronegativities, in fact, so AuSe compounds should be pretty interesting to study...

Stonemason89 (talk) 19:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck writing up the gold tellurides, that info would be welcome.--Smokefoot (talk) 22:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]