minerals Article Colloidal and Deposited Products of the Interaction of Tetrachloroauric Acid with Hydrogen Selenide and Hydrogen Sulfide in Aqueous Solutions Sergey Vorobyev 1, Maxim Likhatski 1, Alexander Romanchenko 1, Nikolai Maksimov 1, Sergey Zharkov 2,3, Alexander Krylov 2 and Yuri Mikhlin 1,* 1 Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk 660036, Russia;
[email protected] (S.V.);
[email protected] (M.L.);
[email protected] (A.R.);
[email protected] (N.M.) 2 Kirensky Institute of Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk 660036, Russia;
[email protected] (S.Z.);
[email protected] (A.K.) 3 Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk 660041, Russia * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +7-391-205-1928 Received: 11 October 2018; Accepted: 29 October 2018; Published: 31 October 2018 Abstract: The reactions of aqueous gold complexes with H2Se and H2S are important for transportation and deposition of gold in nature and for synthesis of AuSe-based nanomaterials but are scantily understood. Here, we explored species formed at different proportions of HAuCl4, H2Se and H2S at room temperature using in situ UV-vis spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering (DLS), zeta-potential measurement and ex situ Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Raman spectroscopy. Metal gold colloids arose at the molar ratios H2Se(H2S)/HAuCl4 less than 2. At higher ratios, pre-nucleation “dense liquid” species having the hydrodynamic diameter of 20–40 nm, zeta potential −40 mV to −50 mV, and the indirect band gap less than 1 eV derived from the UV-vis spectra grow into submicrometer droplets over several hours, followed by fractional nucleation in the interior and + coagulation of disordered gold chalcogenide.