Fulminating gold, the first high-explosive compound to be discovered, disintegrates in a mysterious cloud of purple smoke, the nature of which has been speculated upon since its discovery in 1585. In this work, we show that the colour of the smoke is due to the presence of gold nanoparticles.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2310.15125,
title = {Explosive Chrysopoeia},
author = {Jan Maurycy Uszko and Stephen J. Eichhorn and Avinash J. Patil and Simon R. Hall},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.15125},
year = {2023}
}