My lab...it is my life's work, it'll be just that until the very day I die.
It's just something I love to do. Going lab shopping, buying more glass, more reagents, using the reagents I already have to make different one, just experimenting with unusual chemistry, such as preparing unusual oxidation states, complexes,anhydrides, odd sulfur/phosphorus compounds, preparing unusual phosphorus allotropes, I enjoy doing such things just because it can be done....I do it because I like it.
Did you know for example, a recently discovery, is that a BLUE phosphorus allotrope exists. Not totally dissimilar to black P, but it has a wide bandgap as a semiconductor unlike black phosphorus.typically grown layer by layer, very slowly, by means of molecular beam epitaxy on a gold substrate, although I've read of a tellurium based process too. Not sure if it can be grown in bulk, as in flakes, chunks, or only as a monolayer or dilayer, but I'd love one day to do so, I haven't the means to do so atm, but one day, I'd love to see blue phosphorus, prepared by my own hands. Not of course, at home, in semiconductor purity, but simply to possess a sample of blue phosphorus to admire.
If you think me lying, look up the words 'blue phosphorus' and you will see papers published upon it, analyzing it's semiconductor bandgap etc.
Why would I want to? simply to have prepared it, so I can look at it, admire it, and feel pride in the achievement. Same for violet, scarlet, Hittorf's alpha-metallic phosphorus (also called violet P, there exist two different forms of violet phosphorus), scarlet, otherwise known as Schlenk's phosphorus...I want to make them all, not because in chemistry I have use for black P, it's unreactive, but there exist at least two crystalline structures, as exist many for white. There's apparently, although I've seen one chart stating grey vitreous P and how to prepare it from one of the crystal forms of white possy, I wish to prepare all of those possible, from white P to phosphorus nanostructures. (so far, I've gone as far as white phosphorus, easily made from simply heating red P under inert gas and distilling into H2O, with a trap in between the heating vessel and the deep, ice-cold water to catch the P2 vapor)
Next is either violet phosphorus ala hittorff. by recrystallization of white phosphorus in molten lead, keeping it really hot in the molten lead and decreasing the temperature degree by degree, and once at RT once again, removal of Pb using nitric acid to dissolve the lead away, then boiling in HCl to give Hittorff's violet P. or by crystallizing it out of a carbon disulfide solution of white P, irradiated with UV over time, the distilling off the CS2 for re-use as it is a hardish solvent to get hold of for me) which gives scarlet/Shlenk's phosphorus.
WHY? I've lab uses for red and white, but not for the others. I just wish to prepare them and own a sample of each, enclosed in sealed ampoules under inert gas. For an element collection. I've made elemental silicon for the same reason, not because I need it, and I could doubtless get cheap bits of silicon as either powder or solid pieces, but the joy, it's in making it with my own equipment, doing it for the sake of doing it and owning the end product.
I simply adore chemistry. Why? why not? I've always loved the sciences, even those I could never hope to breakthrough in any manner, like ultra-high energy particle physics. I cannot compete in that field, but do I love to read about the latest developments in plasma physics, in fusion, in particle accelerators, but I know I could only ever make simplistic particle accelerators that do indeed fire and steer the likes of proton/antiproton beams, or electron or positron beams. Why? why not? if I wish to engage in the sciences, it is my prerogative to do so, and as long as I harm nobody but, at worst going to worst and harm is done at all, it is to me and no other.
That, as an adult, is my choice. I may do so, and I will do so. Because I love it.
