“…[7,[13][14][15][16]. However, two fairly recent publications have suggested that soluble alkaline earth metal salts prepared by the reaction of H 3 [PMo 12 O 40 ] (and also H 3 [PW 12 O 40 ]) and the alkaline earth hydroxides, which were characterized by infrared spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), differential thermal analysis and nitrogen adsorption-desorption measurements, are, in fact, a mixture of simple divalent salts and the parent acid itself [17,18]. Moreover, a single-crystal X-ray structural investigation of the product obtained from the Ba 2+ /[PMo 12 O 40 ] 3− system gave a unit cell effectively identical with that of the hydrated acid, H 3 [PMo 12 O 40 ]·(29-30)H 2 O [18][19][20] and, furthermore, the Ba 2+ ions could not be located within the unit cell, supporting the above conclusion.…”