Eduard Zintl

Eduard Zintl
Born	(1898-01-21)21 January 1898 Weiden, Germany
Died	Darmstadt, Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	Inorganic chemistry
Institutions	University of Munich, Darmstadt University of Technology
Alma mater	University of Munich
Doctoral advisor	Otto Hönigschmid
Known for	Zintl phase

Eduard Zintl (21 January 1898 – 17 January 1941) was a German chemist.

After his family moved from Weiden and Bayreuth to Munich and after he had finished school he was drafted for military service during World War I. At the age of 21 he started studying at the University of Munich with Otto Hönigschmid. He got his PhD at the age of 25 with a thesis on the molar mass of bromine. He stayed with Otto Hönigschmid's group, where he was involved in the supervision of PhD students, for example Josef Goubeau and Günther Rienäcker. From 1928 till 1933 he was professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Freiburg. During this period he studied the structure of complex anions formed by metals in a solution of sodium in ammonia. [Na(NH₃)_x]⁺₄[Pb₉]⁴⁻ is one of the examples he discovered. In 1933 he moved to a position at the Darmstadt University of Technology, where a new building for inorganic and physical chemistry was planned and built. The research on complex anions lead him to the discovery of the Zintl phases. In the Zintl phase the structure of the Zintl ion (polyanion) should be similar to an isoelectronic element. For example, in Na₂Tl the polyanion is tetrahedral (Tl₄)⁸⁻ similar to the phosphorus molecule P₄.