The appearance of a diamond engagement ring in the long and convoluted love story between Botswana’s First Lady Detective, Mma Ramotswe, and the owner and brilliant mechanic of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, seems to signal an end to this particular sub-plot, stretching over several volumes of Alexander McCall Smith’s bestselling and original series of crime novels (that we met in Chapter 1). However, a slight problem involving cubic zirconia is discovered, and the story lingers on until the next book in the series. Similar names for elements and their compounds are a nuisance in chemistry, but oft en arise historically, and zirconium is just one such example. Apart from the pure metal we have zircon and zirconia, all three of which have important applications. Zircon is zirconium silicate, with the formula ZrSiO4, and cubic zirconia is a special form of zirconium dioxide, ZrO2. The latter, as you may have guessed, is an excellent diamond substitute in, among other applications, engagement rings. We are not going to dwell on the details of the element zirconium, but you should know that within the Periodic Table it is located in the large middle chunk called the transition metals. You have probably heard of its cousin titanium, immediately above it, and a sibling, hafnium, straight down the ladder. Why do I call them siblings? Because in the Periodic Table elements in the same column tend to have similar chemical properties. In particular, in the family of transition metals in the central section containing 27 elements—each with a number of properties in common—the two lower elements in each column tend to be the most similar. The similar chemical properties of zirconium and titanium means that we can usually find zirconium where we mine the much more plentiful titanium, and also that once we have separated the titanium from zirconium there will be a small quantity of hafnium trailing along—an impurity that is much harder to get rid of. The sleek jeweller in Gaborone will not care if his fake diamonds contain trace levels of HfO2 mixed with the ZrO2.
Scaling Effects in Sodium Zirconium Silicate Phosphate (Na
1+
x
Z
r
2
Si
x
P
3−
x
O
12
) Ion‐Conducting Thin Films
