Mr Berry, Notes on the volatilization, etc. om 
Notes on the volatilization of certain binary alloys in high 
vacua. By A. J. Berry, B.A., of Trinity and Downing Colleges. 
[Read 11 November 1912. ] 
In a previous paper (A. J. Berry, Roy. Soc. Proc., 1911, 864, 
67) it was shown that the compound MgZn, could be prepared by 
distillation of an alloy containing excess of zinc in an apparatus 
exhausted by cold charcoal. It was also shown that the com- 
pound MgZn, can itself be vaporized unchanged in a high vacuum. 
These observations have been repeated and confirmed and experi- 
ments have been performed on other pairs of metals in the hope 
of isolating intermetallic compounds. 
The phenomena of the vaporization of alloys when heated in 
vacuo has occupied the attention of other investigators. Thus 
Tiede and Fischer (Ber. Deutsch. Chem. Ges. 1911, 44, 1712) have 
effected a quantitative separation of lead and tin from an alloy of 
these two metals. Groves and Turner (T’rans. Chem. Soc. 1912, 
101, 585) have examined the behaviour of a number of alloys and 
have classified them into five groups as follows: 
Group i. The metals are non-volatile and the alloy is un- 
altered in weight. 
Group II. The volatile metal or metals are removed and a 
quantitative separation results. 
Group III. Any excess of volatile metal is removed and a 
chemical compound remains. 
Group IV. Any excess of volatile metal is removed, but the 
residue is not a compound. 
Group V. The metals composing the alloy volatilize together, 
their relative proportions being in part dependent on the tem-_ 
perature. 
EXPERIMENTAL. 
The experimental method already deseribed (loc. cit.) has been 
employed with but slight modifications. The distillations were 
conducted in an electric furnace, and the charcoal was kept 
immersed in liquid air during the initial stages of the distillation 
with the object of removing gas occluded within the body of the 
metal. 
Copper and cadmium. An alloy containing excess of cadmium 
was heated at a temperature of about 600° for several hours. On 
analysis it was found that the two metals bad been separated 
quantitatively. A confirmatory experiment yielded identical 
results. 
