Cupric acetylide

[AdrenalineJunky]

When I made this stuff before it was great other then when I dried it out it seemed to oxidize after a while or something to where it lost much of its umph and just crackled and popped when a match was put too it, its use was short lived.

would it make much of a deference if I first dried it out with an ether wash?
how may I fix this problem and make it more stable and storable once dried?
or is the problem more due to impurities?
when searching the net I find no reference to this problem.

What I done:
I dissolved copper wire in a muriatic acid bath,
then dissolved the resulting cupric chloride in industrial strength ammonia,
then I bubbled acetylene through it to get the precep
and then carefully pressed the moisture out then let air dry.
it seemed to be good only for a day or so before seemingly oxidizing to where it had little use..

[john lee]

Originally Posted by AdrenalineJunky

When I made this stuff before it was great other then when I dried it out it seemed to oxidize after a while or something to where it lost much of its umph and just crackled and popped when a match was put too it, its use was short lived.

would it make much of a deference if I first dried it out with an ether wash?
how may I fix this problem and make it more stable and storable once dried?
or is the problem more due to impurities?
when searching the net I find no reference to this problem.

What I done:
I dissolved copper wire in a muriatic acid bath,
then dissolved the resulting cupric chloride in industrial strength ammonia,
then I bubbled acetylene through it to get the precep
and then carefully pressed the moisture out then let air dry.
it seemed to be good only for a day or so before seemingly oxidizing to where it had little use..

I've not made copper acetylide,so can't answer your question,but silver acteylide is easyer to make than the copper one,but you will need to heat the nitric acid to 50 deg c to get the silver nitrate and you do not need ammonia.I hope you have a good breathing mask!Cheers John.