AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Xef4 molecular geometry3/16/2023 Each Fl will donate an electron to Xe and Xe will reciprocate (Fl makes single bonds), so there are two bonds, and two of the 8 electrons from the Xe valence shell are "used up" and there are three lone pair remaining. Xe is a noble gas, right, but forget about that for a minute and just accept that its bound to Fl. You've got your "central atom", and that's Xe. RPedio nailed it, but I personally would have a hard time interpreting that if I wasn't familiar with AXE and VSEPR, so here is an alternate explanation hopefully it helps. The concepts of shape are pretty tough and hard to explain over a message board, but please let me know what parts are confusing and I can further elaborate. So since we have five things attached to the xenon (three lone pairs, two bonds) we adopt a trigonal bipyramidal geometry, but three of the spaces are occupied by lone pairs, which gives you a linear shape. ![]() Let me know if you need help calculating formal charge. With three lone pairs on the xenon, we have three lone pairs and two bonds on xenon, which gives it a formal charge of zero. So let's put them on the xenon and see what happens. We have now used 8 electron pairs, and have three left. So fluorine makes one bond each, so that's two bonds total, so that's two more electron pairs. So if we place Xe in the center and the F on the outside, we need three lone pairs on each fluorine (fluorine likes to make one bond to keep its formal charge zero), so we've used up six electron pairs, because we have three lone pairs on each fluorine. ![]() So xenon has 8 valence electrons, and each of the two fluorines have 7 valence electrons for a total of 22 electrons, or 11 electron pairs. Sulfur and phosphorus are other common elements that exhibit this phenomenon. ![]() That means that there can be more than eight electrons around the xenon. so remember that xenon has access to the low-lying d-orbitals and so it can have what we call an expanded octet.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |