Antimony hydride, SbH3

Antimony hydride (Stibine) (SbH3) Rapid Very slow... 

The most important antimony hydride, stibine, SbH3 is a malodorous, extremely toxic gas (bp -18 °C, mp -88 °C) formed from soluble antimony compounds and hydrogen in... 

Traces of Sb have been separated as the volatile hydride SbH3 [28,29]. Antimony is reduced in fairly concentrated HCl with amalgamated zinc. 

Methods for several metals or metalloids involve conversion to a volatile form. Arsenic, antimony, and selenium can be reduced to their volatile hydrides, AsH3, SbH3, and H2Se, repectively, which can be determined by atomic absorption or other means. Mercury is reduced to volatile mercury metal, which is evolved from solution and measured by cold vapor atomic absorption. 

A number of different reactions have been described for the formation of covalent volatile metal hydrides, which aU have as a common denominator that they rely on the formation of atomic hydrogen as reducing agent [15]. For the generation of volatile hydrides of arsenic, antimony, and selenium (ASH3, SbH3 and H2Se) the well-known reaction of Zn with concentrated hydrochloric acid may be employed ... 

The hydrides ASH3 and SbH3 resemble those of PH3 (Table 15.4), but they are less stable with respect to decomposition into their elements. The thermal instability of ASH3 and SbH3 was the basis for the Marsh test. This is a classic analytical technique used in forensic science in which arsenic- or antimony-containing materials were first converted to AsHs or SbH3, and the latter were then thermally decomposed (equation 15.30). Treatment of the brown-black residue with aqueous NaOCl was used to distinguish between As (which reacted, equation 15.31) and Sb (which did not react). 

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