Silver cyanate
chemical compound
Silver cyanate is the cyanate salt of silver. It is a white/beige powder. It was likely discovered in the mid 1820's by Friedrich Wöhler, a German chemist, being used by Wöhler to synthesize urea. It later sparked a debate with Justus von Liebig, as Liebig had a similar compound, silver fulminate, an isomer of silver cyanate, which he believed to be the same composition of exactly one of each silver, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. While it did contain the same atoms, its atomic structure was inherently different; silver fulminate has a weak Ag-C bond, while in silver cyanate, the silver is bonded with nitrogen. This debate led to the discovery of isomerism.
Structure
Silver cyanate crystallises in the monoclinic crystal system in space group P21/m with parameters a = 547.3 pm, b = 637.2 pm, c = 341.6 pm, and β = 91°. Each unit cell contains two cyanate ions and two silver ions. The silver ions are each equidistant from two nitrogen atoms forming a straight N–Ag–N group. The nitrogen atoms are each coordinated to two silver atoms, so that there are zigzag chains of alternating silver and nitrogen atoms going in the direction of the monoclinic "b" axis, with the cyanate ions perpendicular to that axis.
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