Paradoxes and paradigms: on ambisaline ions of nitrogen
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Paradoxes and paradigms: on ambisaline ions of nitrogen Maja Ponikvar-Svet 1 & Kathleen F. Edwards 2 & Joel F. Liebman 3 Received: 23 September 2020 / Accepted: 30 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Ambisaline ions can be defined as species that exist as cations and as anions in appropriate salts although admittedly not necessarily with well-known or commonly existing counterions. In the present paper we review ambisaline ions of nitrogen as present in solid state salts and add a brief thermochemical commentary. We open our discussion with all nitrogen species composed of solely nitrogen and extend it to polynitrogen ambisaline species consisting of nitrogen(s) with hydrogen (or other univalent groups) affixed to these nitrogens. Keywords Ambisaline ions . Salts . Nitrogen . Thermochemistry
Introduction About a decade ago two of the current authors [1, 2] (KFE and JFL) introduced the adjective “ambisaline” to describe a species “X so that X+ and X– may be found both as cation and anion in isolable salts, albeit very often not with commonplace counterions.” The term “ambisaline” can be regarded as an analogue of “amphoteric” or “amphihydridic” behavior; thus, it can be considered also as a manifestation of the trichotomy of convenience, anthropocentrism, and folksonomy. We start by noting elements as gaseous atoms form monoatomic cations [3], admitting now that a few recently discovered elements with high atomic numbers Z have never been so studied or only recently so, e.g., for Nobelium (No, Z = 102) [4, 5]. Most elements bind an additional electron in
* Joel F. Liebman [email protected] Maja Ponikvar-Svet [email protected] Kathleen F. Edwards [email protected] 1
Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Technology, Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI–1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2
The Graduate School, University of Maryland Global Campus, Largo, MD 20774, USA
3
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
the gas phase and thereby form the corresponding anion [6]. The noble gases, among a few other elements, have unbound negatively charged species. As such, several thousand 1:1 binary salts may be posited (even if we know whether to consider either [X]+[Y]− or [Y]+[X]− and to ignore homonuclear diatomic species [X]+[X]−). Under standard ambient conditions, most of these putative binary saline species are unknown. The known salts are found in different forms: (1) covalent diatomic molecules, e.g., N2; (2) condensed phase metals and alloys, e.g., NaK; (3) merely polar compounds, e.g., HBr; or (4) ionic solids we wish to investigate, e.g., NaCl. In this paper, most often, the thermochemical data base [7] will be used as the documentation of the existence of any neutral polyatomic species of interest. When needed, other more individualized references will be given. Related to these monoatomic species are those ions found in the ion energetics data base
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