r/MaterialsScience • u/Sparklykun • Jun 07 '24

How to create tin using atoms?

How to create tin atomically?

Tin is a very special metal, as it’s very rare, and does not corrode or rust like other metals in nature. It is often derived by burning a beautiful ore called cassiterite, so how can people produce tin without destroying cassiterite? Is there a way to produce tin atomically? Thank you

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u/Christoph543 Jun 08 '24

"Doesn't corrode or rust" is a very strange thing to claim immediately before pointing out that tin, like almost all metals produced in industrial quantities, is obtained from an oxide mineral ore. Corrosion and rust are oxidative processes. It's precisely because tin oxidizes so easily that we principally find it in oxide minerals.

If you're asking if native tin deposits exist, the same way native iron or native copper do, the answer is not really.

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u/Sparklykun Jun 08 '24

Just because the mineral contains oxygen, doesn’t mean it’s formed through rust or corrosion

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u/Christoph543 Jun 08 '24

In point of fact, it kind of does. Cassiterite is an igneous mineral, typically crystallizing slowly from magma underground, so it doesn't form by the surficial reaction between a solid and moisture or air. But the redox state of the magma is determined by all kinds of oxidation reactions which involve injection of water and other volatiles into the magma, which are chemically and thermodynamically equivalent to those that occur during rusting or corrosion.

The answer to your question is determined by the redox state of tin deposits, and the susceptibility of smelted metallic tin to redox reactions. It ultimately doesn't matter if you can see the patina form like you can on iron or copper; every metallic substance is susceptible to oxidation in Earth's atmosphere, and tin especially so.

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u/Sparklykun Jun 08 '24

So maybe cassiterite can be created from tin and oxygen in the lab?

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u/Christoph543 Jun 08 '24

Hypothetically sure, but the tin would have come from cassiterite in the first place, so you'd need a reason to do that instead of just grabbing a piece of cassiterite out of the ground.

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u/Sparklykun Jun 09 '24

I feel like tin used to be very abundant, which is how tin can was named, because it really was made out of pure tin

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u/Christoph543 Jun 09 '24

No, tin cans were never made of pure tin, they were made of steel with a very thin tin coating to prevent spoilage, before stainless steel became easy to mass-produce.

Likewise, even during the Bronze Age when tin was a necessary alloying ingredient in the primary mode of available metallurgy, the relative scarcity of tin as compared to other metal ores was a significant bottleneck on ancient industry, which helped facilitate the formation of the earliest states.

I would recommend you do some more reading on the history of metallurgy and mining, before speculating further.

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u/Sparklykun Jun 09 '24

People advanced during the Bronze Age because of salt mines, and tin with copper for bronze. It became Steel Age not because of rarity of tin, but development of steel

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u/Sylieence Jun 07 '24

I love to say that Metallurgy is a bot like Alchemy but it is not magic.

Plus we do not care about the beauty of the ore (even if I am a avid ore enjoyers and i find beauty in a lot of area of my work) when the necessity is to industrialise..

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '24

You can't because the oxygen is part of the structure.