This input compounds form provides a facility of retrieval of those compounds which will be respectively input by users on the basis of convetions.
a set of chemical formula can be input by using "," as delimiter; for example, "FeO, Fe3O4, O2". MALT retrieval provides all compounds which have the same chemical formula as either of "FeO" , "Fe3O4" or "O2".
You cannot specify the phase (solid, liquid gas) nor one of polymorphs(α-Al2O3, β-Al2O3).
Retrieval is made in terms of elements and their stoichiometric numbers. This allows to use the different names for the same compounds. However, Al2O3 and AlO1.5 cannot be recognized as the same compound. For avoid this difference, it is recommended to see whole compounds in the target system (for example, Al-O system).
To input chemical formulae, MALT adopts the following conventions:
In MALT, no subscript nor superscript is used. From this requirement, the charge should be always given after the sign (+) or (-) like Fe+3; note that this is against the normal convention that the charge number is put before the sign.
complex chemical formulae can be set up by using "*" as combining two formulae.
As coefficient of one chemical formula in the complex chemical formula, non integer value such as 1/2 can be also used.
Chemical formula consists of a set of elements and their stoichiometric numbers. Element shoulbe given using the upper and lower characters like C or Co. Note that CO means carbon monoxide, whereas Co is cobalt.
The stoichiometric number of unity can be omitted in the normal manner like Fe, Ca.
The appearance sequence of element does not affect the retrieval. The input of "FeO4S" leads to correctly retrieval of FeSO4.
The nonstoichiometric number can be allowed. Even so, the given stoichiometric number should be equal to that given in the MALT database. To know the exact value of the particular compound, it is highly suggested to retrieve first by the retrieval mode (1) in the selected system. For example, retrieval by <Fe,O> shows that Fe0.947O is available in the MALT database so that "Fe0.947O" can be used for the present input compounds form.
Even so, the stoichiometric number in one chemical formula cannot be given as a fraction using the slash"/".
The order of elements in a chemical formula does not provide any differences in retrieval mode. For example, FeSO4 is essentially the same as FeO4S and the compound of "FeSO4" appears in the compound table.
