Date: Mar 14, 2019
Testa Analytical Solutions e.K reports on how a BI-200SM light scattering goniometer system with autocorrelator has helped researchers at a prestigious government laboratory to solve the enigma of why aqueous molybdenum solutions are blue.
A spokesperson from the Department of Physics at the government laboratory said “Molybdenum and oxygen can combine to form a wide variety of structures, and some polyoxomolybdate (POM) molecules are the biggest inorganic molecules known, achieving similar sizes to proteins”. He added “The electronic state of the POMs is responsible for imparting a blue color to the surrounding solution, as the giant POMs cluster together rather than existing as single ions. Because of the size of the POMs, we realized we could use our BI-200SM light scattering goniometer to find out the actual structure of the complexes and we subsequently discovered a unique blackberry arrangement that we believe represents a new, stable solute state. It has changed our understanding of the solution behavior of inorganic molecules when they reach nanometer sizes.”
