To be honest, antimony is far down the list of best sellers here at Luciteria. It is an element that fails to garner much in the way of inspiration. It’s just a bit too common, cheap and unattractive. It doesn’t help that it’s fragile and tends to turn to a pile of messy crumbs if handled roughly.

But - there’s always a but - thanks to a quirk of processing and the juju of chemistry, electronics-grade antimony forms into drop dead gorgeous plugs perfect for housing as ornaments. Each of these cylinders was formed using the zone refining method that is a staple for the ultra-high purity metalloids needed in the semiconductor industry. The principle is fairly simple. Impurities in these elements tend to drop out of solution so to get rid of them all that needs to be done is to have the sample go through repeated malt thaw cycles. Specifically, a starting crystal of already quite pure antimony will have a comb-like stylus that is electrically heated past its melting point. As it rakes the crystal back and forth the traces of other elements follow along the melting area which on its final pass is taken to the extreme end where it can be lopped off and the remainder is ready for production. The higher the purity needed the higher the corresponding number of passes it needs to go through.

We stop at seven nines (99.99999%) because going higher at this point increases the price without any added benefit in terms of visual appeal. Securely affixed in this protective glass dome, each of these stunning yet fragile rods is protected from harm. It’s one of the few samples we sell that would likely please even someone who couldn’t care less about nerdy science stuff just for being so weirdly attractive in their own right. If you buy only one dome, you can’t go wrong with this one!