Long story short-this is research for a piece of fiction. Is there any chemical or reaction, even if otherwise pointless, that would achieve this, besides just painting the gold?
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This is sort of the inverse of what you’re asking, but in case is was useful:
Gold sulfide is usually grey or black (wikipedia describes it as “steel-grey”). It has the interesting property that if you heat it to fairly benign temperatures (300 C or so) it spontaneously converts to pure gold plus sulfur.
Sadly, I’m not aware of a way to go from gold to gold sulfide in one step. Two step process: treat with potassium cyanide to make potassium dicyanoaurate, then treat that with hydrogen sulfide. Don’t try this at home; both treatments involve poisonous chemicals.
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