Sciencemadness Discussion Board

has anyone prepared silicon disulfide ?

Shenno - 4-7-2021 at 11:44

i have done several attempts to synthesis it but the only successful way was mixing sulfur and silicon in stoichiometric amounts and adding 0.5 mole precipitated silica for every mole of silicon and putting the mixture in an iron container and igniting it with magnesium thermite ( i ignited the thermite with KMnO4 + Glycerine) .. the reaction was extremely strong and the product was crumby and easily crushable, but someone after reacting the product with anhydrous ethanol ( trying to make tetraethyl orthosilicate) and weighting the residue it seemed that less than 25 % of the mass was silicon disulfide while the 75 % was unreactive matter ( i tried reflux as well ) which is of course a very bad yield compared to the literature, and anyways the reaction with ethanol always ended up with gel Whether i used heat or not
i also tried to react silicon powder with sulfur without the silica and igniting it the same way but i always ended up with a melted sulfur silicon mixture which solidified after a shot time.

so .. has anyone successfully prepared silicon disulfide in a decent yield from the elements ? i would really appreciate any help

PS: i dont have access to any aluminum sulfide so i cant use this route

this is a Onedrive link for the reaction i did
https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ao-xsE8BnvftmQPgO7y3DdMwfUQq?e=l4tvse