A total ring of fractions of a nonzero commutative ring
with multiplicative identity is the localization
, where
is the set of all nonzero elements that are not zero divisors.
It is also called a total quotient ring (Stacks Project, Tag 00CM).
The natural ring homomorphism is injective. Indeed,
requires
for some
,
which forces
by the choice of
.
This distinguishes the total ring of fractions from a general ring
of fractions obtained by localization at an
arbitrary multiplicatively closed set.
For an integral domain,
and
is its field of fractions.
For
,
instead, the permitted denominators are the ring units
1 and 5, so
is isomorphic to
, despite the presence of zero
divisors.