Comprehensive Guide to Nickel: Structure, Preparation, and More

Have you ever wondered why nickel is such a vital metal in our daily lives? From the coins in your pocket to high-performance alloys in jet engines, nickel’s versatility is unmatched. This guide explores the discovery, properties, and diverse applications of nickel, including its critical role in creating stainless steel and memory alloys. By understanding nickel’s unique characteristics, you’ll gain insight into its essential contributions to modern technology and industry.

Table Of Contents

Nickel has a wide range of applications in our daily life, such as in the making of coins and the production of alloys. Today, let’s take a closer look at this metal – nickel.

Nickel is located in Group VIII of the periodic table, together with iron, cobalt, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum, forming Group VIII. Among them, iron, cobalt, and nickel are called “iron group elements”.

I. The Discovery and Naming of Nickel

Humanity has known and used nickel for a very long time. Nickel was first used in China as early as the 3rd century BC, when the Chinese people added nickel ore to copper to make an alloy – white copper, used for casting coins.

At the end of the 17th century, German miners discovered a reddish-brown ore that often had green spots on its surface. When added to the raw materials for making glass, it could dye the glass green. At that time, this mineral was mistaken for copper ore, and metallurgists tried many times to extract copper from it, but all attempts failed.

The miners called it “Kupfernickel,” with Kupfer meaning copper in German, and nickel meaning a deceiving sprite, hence Kupfernickel could be translated as “false copper.”

It was not until 1751 that the Swedish mineralogist and chemist Cronstedt A F (1722—1765) studied this mineral. After numerous experiments, he isolated a white metal from Kupfernickel and named it Nickel.

This is also the origin of the Latin name for nickel, Niccolum. We transliterate the first syllable into “nickel,” with the chemical symbol Ni. Now we know that Kupfernickel is a nickel arsenide ore, and the green spots on its surface are nickel carbonate.

In the April 1943 issue of the American “Journal of Chemical Education,” an article excerpted from the International Nickel Company was published, titled “The Mysterious Paktong,” excerpted as follows:

“Three hundred years ago, one day, a huge merchant ship battered by storms and slowly approaching the Thames River, heading towards the dock, was coming home! A year ago, it sailed from London to seek the Far East. Now it has returned, carrying goods such as tea, silk, and spices.

In addition, there was a new item, made of metal, which shone with the soft luster of pure silver, but they were definitely not silver, they were a hard metal. The Chinese called it Paktong, and they carefully guarded the secret of how to make it.

After the spread of this strange metal, generations of European metalworkers tried to imitate white copper, but they never found the reason for each failure. It was not until the mid-eighteenth century that a Swedish scientist identified a new metal, acknowledged by another scientist, as the metal of the mysterious alloy for making white copper. It is the metal that miners in Saxony discovered and cursed as fake copper.

II. Distribution, Presence, and Content of Nickel

Nickel is not scarce in the Earth’s crust, being more abundant than common metals such as lead and tin, but significantly less so than iron. Cobalt and nickel often coexist in nature, with important cobalt and nickel ores being cobaltite (CoAsS) and nickel pyrite (NiS·FeS).

In nature, the most important nickel ores are garnierite (nickel arsenide) and nickel arsenide (sulfarsenide). Cuba is the most famous country in the world for nickel ore deposits, with large amounts of nickel ore also found in the Dominican Republic.

The content of nickel in the sun is 80ppm, in seawater is 0.0001ppm, and in the Earth’s crust is 80ppm. Nickel is also one of the essential elements for organisms, but its content in organisms is very small, less than one ten-thousandth, known as a trace element. Foods rich in nickel include: chocolate, nuts, dried beans, and grains.

III. Isotopes of Nickel

There are many isotopes of nickel, with a variety of properties. Here is a list of them:

IsotopesAbundanceHalf-lifeDecay modeDecay energy/eVDecay products
56NiArtificial6.077天Electron capture2.13656Co
58Ni68.077%Stable
59NiArtificial76,000年Electron capture1.07259Co
60Ni26.233%Stable
61Ni1.14%Stable
62Ni3.634%Stable
63NiArtificial100.1年Beta decay2.13763Cu
64Ni0.926%Stable

IV. The Structure and Properties of Elements

1. Structure:

The unit cell is a face-centered cubic cell, containing 4 metal atoms per cell.

Lattice parameters:

  • a=352.4pm
  • b=352.4pm
  • C=352.4pm
  • α=90°
  • β=90°
  • Y=90°
  • Mohs hardness: 4
  • Outer electron configuration: 3d84s2
  • Electron configuration outside nucleus: 2,8,16,2

2.Physical properties:

(1) Approximately silver-white metal;

  • Density: 8.902g/cm3
  • Melting point: 1453.0℃
  • Boiling point: 2732.0℃
  • Atomic volume: 6.59cm3/mol
  • Relative atomic mass: 58.69

(2) Hard and ductile;

(3) Ferromagnetic:

(4) Highly polishable and corrosion-resistant:

(5) Conductive and thermally conductive.

3. Chemical properties

(1) At room temperature, nickel forms a dense oxide film on its surface in moist air, which not only prevents further oxidation but also resists corrosion by alkalis and salt solutions;

(2) Bulk nickel does not burn, fine nickel wire can burn, and specially made fine porous nickel particles will burn white in air;

(3) When heated, nickel reacts violently with oxygen, sulfur, chlorine, and bromine;

(4) Fine powdered nickel can absorb a considerable amount of hydrogen when heated;

(5) Nickel dissolves slowly in dilute hydrochloric acid, dilute sulfuric acid, and dilute nitric acid, but its surface is passivated in fuming nitric acid. It turns green after dissolving in nitric acid.

V. Preparation of nickel

1. Electrolysis method.

Roast the enriched sulfide ore into oxides, reduce it to crude nickel with carbon, and then obtain pure metallic nickel through electrolysis.

2. Carbonylation method.

React nickel sulfide ore with carbon monoxide to produce nickel tetracarbonyl, which decomposes upon heating to yield very pure metallic nickel.

3. Hydrogen reduction method.

Metallic nickel can be obtained by reducing nickel oxide with hydrogen.

Top ten nickel-producing countries in the world (annual output: thousand tons)

Country Name1977198219871992
Russia144.3165.2272.0215.0
Canada235.488.6189.0192.1
New Caledonia109.160.156.9113.1
Indonesia14.045.957.878.1
Australia85.887.674.664.0
China12.025.037.0
Cuba37.036.133.832.2
South Africa23.022.034.328.4
Dominican Republic24.25.432.525.0
Botswana12.117.825.923.5
Subtotal of ten countries685.0540.6801.8808.4
Global total772.8621.6892.5921.9

VI. Uses of Nickel

1. Widely used in alloy manufacturing

Adding nickel to steel can improve its mechanical strength. For example, when the nickel content in steel increases from 2.94% to 7.04%, the tensile strength increases from 52.2 kg/mm 2 to 72.8 kg/mm 3 . Nickel steel is used to manufacture parts of machines that bear high pressure, withstand impacts, and reciprocating loads, such as turbine blades, crankshafts, connecting rods, etc.

Nickel steel containing 36% nickel and 0.3-0.5% carbon has a very small coefficient of expansion, almost no thermal expansion or contraction, and is used to manufacture various precision machinery, accurate gauges, etc. High nickel steel containing 46% nickel and 0.15% carbon is called “Invar” because its coefficient of expansion is similar to that of platinum and glass. This type of high nickel steel can be welded to glass.

It is very important in the production of light bulbs and can be used as a substitute for platinum wire. Some precision lens frames are also made of this Invar steel, preventing the lens from falling out of the frame due to thermal expansion and contraction. An alloy composed of 67.5% nickel, 16% iron, 15% chromium, and 1.5% manganese has a high electrical resistance and is used to manufacture various resistors and electric heaters.

2. Nickel-titanium alloys have a “memory” capability

Nickel-titanium alloys have a “memory” capability, and moreover, a very strong memory, accurately returning to its original shape after being deformed millions of times over a considerable length of time. This “memory” capability is to remember its original shape, hence it is called “shape memory alloy.”

Originally, this alloy has a characteristic transformation temperature. Above this transformation temperature, it has one type of crystal structure, and below it, it has another type of crystal structure. Different structures result in different properties.

For example, a nickel-titanium memory alloy is very hard and strong above its transformation temperature, but below this temperature, it becomes very soft and easy to cold work. Thus, when we need it to remember a certain shape, we shape it accordingly. This is its “permanent memory” shape. Below the transformation temperature, because it is very soft, we can deform it to a considerable extent as desired.

And when it needs to return to its original shape, just heating it above the transformation temperature will do. Nickel-titanium shape memory alloys are widely used in the medical field, such as in blood clot filters, spinal correction rods, orthodontic archwires, cerebral aneurysm clips, bone plates, artificial joints, femoral head caps, artificial heart muscles, and miniature pumps for artificial kidneys.

3. Manufacturing electromagnetic cranes

Nickel is magnetic and can be attracted by magnets. Alloys made of aluminum, cobalt, and nickel have even stronger magnetism. When such an alloy is attracted by an electromagnet, not only will it be pulled over, but it can also hold up something sixty times its weight without dropping. Thus, it can be used to manufacture electromagnetic cranes.

4. Used in the manufacture of stainless steel

Nickel is used the most in stainless steel, which can resist corrosion from the atmosphere, steam, and water, as well as acid, alkali, and salt corrosion. Therefore, stainless steel is widely used in chemical, metallurgical, construction, and various civilian applications, such as in the manufacture of containers, towers, tanks, pipelines, etc., that require welding in industries like petrochemical, textile, light industry, nuclear energy; and in the production of urea, synthetic towers, washing towers, condensing towers, steam stripping towers, and other corrosion-resistant high-pressure equipment.

5. Used for nickel plating

Nickel is also used for nickel plating, covering steel and other metal substrates with a durable, corrosion-resistant surface layer that is 20% to 25% more corrosion-resistant than galvanized layers.

6. Used as a catalyst and in dyes.

VII. Important compounds of nickel

The main oxidation states of nickel are +2, in addition to -1, 0, +1, +3, +4, +6, etc., allowing nickel to form a variety of compounds. Here, nickel oxide, nickel sulfate, high nickel hydroxide, and nickel complexes are introduced.

1. Nickel oxide

  • Appearance and properties: green powder.
  • Relative density (water=1): 6.6-6.8
  • Solubility: Insoluble in water, insoluble in alkali, soluble in acids, etc. Soluble in acid and ammonia water, hot perchloric acid, hot sulfuric acid.
  • Main uses: Used as pigments in ceramics and glass. In the enamel industry, it is used as an adhesive and colorant for porcelain glaze. In the ceramic industry, it is used as a raw material for pigments. In the production of magnetic materials, it is used as a raw material for nickel-zinc ferrite. In the glass industry, it is used as a colorant for tea-colored glass and cathode-ray tube glass shells. It is also a raw material for manufacturing nickel salts and nickel catalysts.

2. Nickel sulfate

  • Appearance and properties: Green crystals, orthorhombic crystal system.
  • Boiling point (C): 840 (anhydrous)
  • Relative density (water=1): 2.07
  • Solubility: Soluble in water, soluble in ethanol, slightly soluble in acid, ammonia water.
  • Main uses: Mainly used in the electroplating industry and for making nickel-cadmium batteries and other nickel salts, also used in organic synthesis and in the production of drying oils as a catalyst for paint.

3. Nickel hydroxide

  • Appearance and characteristics: black powder.
  • Solubility: insoluble in water and alkali solution. Soluble in acid and ammonia water.
  • Uses: used for making alkaline batteries, etc.
  • Preparation: obtained by oxidizing nickel hydroxide with hypochlorite.
  • Other: decomposes at melting point.

4. Nickel complexes

Because nickel has d orbitals that can accommodate lone pair electrons, it can form complexes. The main types of nickel complexes are as follows:

  • Ammine coordination compound: [Ni(NH 3 ) 6 ] 2+
  • Cyanide coordination compound: [Ni(CN) 4 ] 2-
  • Chelate: [Ni(en) 3 ] 2+
  • Carbonyl coordination compounds: (a) Ni(CO) (b) (C 2 H 5 ) 2 Ni
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Shane
Author

Shane

Founder of MachineMFG

As the founder of MachineMFG, I have dedicated over a decade of my career to the metalworking industry. My extensive experience has allowed me to become an expert in the fields of sheet metal fabrication, machining, mechanical engineering, and machine tools for metals. I am constantly thinking, reading, and writing about these subjects, constantly striving to stay at the forefront of my field. Let my knowledge and expertise be an asset to your business.

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