New data on the mercury antimony mineral shakhovite: Chemical composition, unit cell and crystal structure

A new investigation of the mercury antimony mineral shakhovite yielded space groupIm witha=4.871(1),b=15.098(3),c=5,433(1) A and β=98.86(2)°. The determination of the crystal structure gave a cell content of Hg8Sb2O12. Since the presence of Hg2-groups indicates that shakhovite is a pure Hg(1) compound and the infrared spectrum shows an absorption band at 3440 cm−1 which is due to the OH-stretching frequency, it is assumed that there are six oxygen atoms and six OH-groups in the unit cell. Thus the chemical formula of shakhovite reads Hg4Sb(OH)3O3 with two formula units per unit cell. The Hg−Hg distance in the Hg2-group is 2.543 A, each mercury atom has a close oxygen neighbour at 2.160 and …