Structure
Xenon difluoride is a linear molecule with an Xe–F bond length of 197.73±0.15 pm in the vapour stage, and 200 pm in the solid phase. The packing arrangement in solid XeF2 shows that the fluorine atoms of neighbouring molecules avoid the equatorial region of each XeF2 molecule. This agrees with the prediction of VSEPR theory, which predicts that there are 3 pairs of non-bonding electrons around the equatorial region of the xenon atom.
At high pressures, novel, non-molecular forms of xenon difluoride can be obtained. Under a pressure of ~50 GPa, XeF2 transforms into a semiconductor consisting of XeF4 units linked in a two-dimensional structure, like graphite. At even higher pressures, above 70 GPa, it becomes metallic, forming a three-dimensional structure containing XeF8 units. However, a recent theoretical study has put these experimental results in doubt.
Read more about this topic: Xenon Difluoride
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows—it must grow; nothing can prevent it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)