11/22/2023 0 Comments Atomic structure of fluorine![]() ![]() Reactions of elemental fluorine with metals require different conditions that depend on the metal. Wood and even water burn with flames when subjected to a jet of fluorine, without the need for a spark. Many substances that are generally regarded as unreactive, such as powdered steel, glass fragments, and asbestos fibers, are readily consumed by cold fluorine gas. Reactions with elemental fluorine are often sudden or explosive. This also helps explain why bonding in F 2 is weaker than in Cl 2. Fluorine's electrons cannot exhibit this d character since there are no such d orbitals close in energy to fluorine's valence orbitals. However, the heavier halogens' p electron orbitals partly mix with those of d orbitals, which results in an increased effective bond order for example, chlorine has a bond order of 1.12. The F 2 molecule is commonly described as having exactly one bond (in other words, a bond order of 1) provided by one p electron per atom, as are other halogen X 2 molecules. This is a result of the relatively large electron and internuclear repulsions, combined with a relatively small overlap of bonding orbitals arising due to the small size of the atoms. The covalent radius of fluorine of about 71 picometers found in F 2 molecules is significantly larger than that in other compounds because of this weak bonding between the two fluorine atoms. The bond energy is significantly weaker than those of Cl 2 or Br 2 molecules and similar to the easily cleaved oxygen–oxygen bonds of peroxides or nitrogen–nitrogen bonds of hydrazines. The fluorine–fluorine bond of the difluorine molecule is relatively weak when compared to the bonds of heavier dihalogen molecules. ![]() In contrast, the diatomic molecules of the neighboring element oxygen, with two unpaired electrons per molecule, are paramagnetic (attracted to magnets). This makes it diamagnetic (slightly repelled by magnets) with the magnetic susceptibility of −1.2×10 −4 (SI), which is close to theoretical predictions. While an individual fluorine atom has one unpaired electron, molecular fluorine (F 2) has all the electrons paired.
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