Copper Group: Elements of the First Subgroup

This chapter presents in detail the occurrence, extraction, properties, applications, and compounds of the elements of the first transition group (copper, silver, gold, roentgenium), whose physical and chemical properties are relatively similar. Copper, silver, and gold have all been known for millennia. The first atom of roentgenium was produced in 1994. In the pair of elements silver and gold, the lanthanide contraction is only weakly noticeable. The respective physical properties of copper, silver, and gold are relatively similar, except for the density increasing from copper to gold, but as with the elements of the fourth to tenth transition group, the reactivity decreases from the head element (here: copper) to the heaviest group member (here: gold). Copper is also already a semi-metal. For copper, the oxidation states +1 and +2 are the most stable, for silver +1, and for gold +1 and +3.