“HeH2O” ...Wait, what?

[DDE]

Several helium-water compounds predicted at ice giant conditions.

https://www.phys.org/news/2019-07-unveils-superionic-states-helium-water-compounds.html

I can’t believe middle school lied to me 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

You're not gonna like this Wikipedia article then... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas_compound?wprov=sfla1

 

Helium's not alone here

[Guest]

4 hours ago, DDE said:

I can’t believe middle school lied to me 

It's hilarious how often things we're told at school fall between inaccurate and utter malarkey. Fluorine, for instance, latches onto anything except helium, neon and argon without much prompting (and you can attach it to the last one if you really want), and the result is... well, it doesn't come apart until it encounters something it can oxidize, at least, so I guess it can be called stable under storage conditions.  

Try tetraxenonogold.  That one's really fun, actually a cationic complex with antimony an lots of fluorine. It seems like its preparation involves lots of fluorine in general (and things like fluoroantimonic acid), so it must have taken some guts to discover, to say the least.

[Hannu2]

23 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

It's hilarious how often things we're told at school fall between inaccurate and utter malarkey. Fluorine, for instance, latches onto anything except helium, neon and argon without much prompting (and you can attach it to the last one if you really want), and the result is... well, it doesn't come apart until it encounters something it can oxidize, at least, so I guess it can be called stable under storage conditions.

Argon compounds are very unstable. Single molecules are formed in solid matrix of noble gas at cryogenic temperatures and can be investigated with spectroscopical methods. Production and storage of macroscopic quantities is impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_isolation

It seems that absurd level of pressure increase stability of some light noble gas compounds, but those conditions are far beyond laboratory experiments. Also, Helium hydride ions can be formed in interstellar gas clouds and have been recently detected,.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1090-x

 

[Guest]

As I said, if you really want, you can make an argon compound.  The bit about stability referred to heavier noble gases. Radon, Xenon and Krypton fluorides are, as far as noble gas compounds go, fairly stable. Probably not something I'd want in my fumehood (then again, I'm a biophysicist and not a fluorine chemist...), but I suppose I wouldn't mind sharing a building with them.  

Edited July 25, 2019 by Guest