Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Growth Of Synthetic Silver Wires From Natural Acanthite, Calvin J. Anderson

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Wire silver is an unusual crystal habit of native silver which is intimately associated with acanthite (Ag2S). These delicate wires have been collected for several centuries, but much remains unknown regarding their growth mechanism and crystal structure. This study has successfully produced synthetic silver wires from natural acanthite in order to investigate the nature of their crystallinity.

Chunks of crude acanthite crystals from the Hongda mine, Shanxi Province, China, were trimmed into roughly 1 cm chunks for growth experiments. Preexisting silver wires, which appeared to be natural, were avoided.

Several techniques were explored with varying degrees of success. Attempts using …