What is "antimonate"

Antimonate \An`ti*mo"nate\, n. (Chem.) A compound of antimonic acid with a base or basic radical.

n. (context inorganic chemistry English) Any salt or ester of antimonic acid; the anion SbO₄^3-

In chemistry an antimonate is a compound which contains a metallic element, oxygen and antimony in an oxidation state of +5. These compounds can be considered to be salts of the hypothetical antimonic acid HSbO, or combinations of metal oxides and antimony pentoxide, SbO. Historically these compounds were assumed to be analogous to the phosphates and formulas such as LiSbO·3HO and NaHSbO·5HO were used and the compounds described as hydrated meta-antimonates and pyro-antimonates. LiSbO·3HO is now known to be LiSb(OH) and contain the anion and that NaHSbO·5HO is actually NaSb(OH).

Some examples of anhydrous antimonates and their structures are shown below:-

• LiSbO has a NaCl superstructure with isolated units
• NaSbO has the ilmenite structure, with hexagonal close packed oxide ions with each ion, Na and Sb occupying a third of the octahedral sites
• MgSbO has the trirutile structure, which is similar to the rutile structure except that there are two different cations in the lattice.
• AlSbO has the rutile with random occupancy
• PbSbO has the pyrochlore structure.
• CaSbO has the weberite structure
• FeSbO has the rutile with random occupancy