Researchers discover highly electronegative chemical species

An international team of researchers has discovered a new class of highly electronegative chemical species called hyperhalogens, which use superhalogens as building blocks around a metal atom. The new chemical species may have application in many industries.

Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University, McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., and the University of Konstanz in Germany report their discovery in the Oct. 6 international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The journal designated the paper as “very important,” recognition granted to only 5 percent of papers it receives.

Chlorine is one of the elements called halogens, a group that includes fluorine, bromine, and iodine. These chemicals are known for their disinfecting and deodorizing power and are also used in some medications and industrial processes. Researchers say that hyperhalogens could be useful in industries where large amounts of halogens are now needed to make cleaning or decontamination products.

Chemists and physicists like Puru Jena, Ph.D., distinguished professor of physics at VCU, know halogens for their reactivity, a characteristic that makes the halogen elements want to bond with another element or a compound by taking one electron. Chlorine, for example, likes being paired with sodium to make table salt. Sodium wants to give away an electron and chlorine wants to take that electron in what Jena calls “a perfect marriage.”

“Halogens only need one electron to reach their happy state,” said Jena. “They’re much more stable as a negative ion than as a neutral atom.”

Spotted on the ASM International website. Read more at: http://www.asminternational.org/portal/site/www/NewsItem/?vgnextoid=c9d1ac2ddab9b210VgnVCM100000621e010aRCRD