Tetraoxygen

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Tetraoxygen

O₄ is also a subclass of O-class stars
Stellar classification

In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based on its spectrum characteristics. The spectral class of a star, is a designation of a class to a star describing the ionization of its chromosphere, what atomic excited states are most prominent in the light, giving an objective measure of the temperature in this chr...
.

The tetraoxygen molecule (O₄), also called oxozone was first predicted in 1924 by Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert Newton Lewis was a famous American physical chemistry known for the discovery of the covalent bond , his purification of heavy water, his reformulation of chemical thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to ordinary chemists, his theory of Lewis acids and bases, and his photochemical experiments....
, who proposed it as an explanation for the failure of liquid oxygen

Liquid oxygen

Liquid oxygen is a form of the element oxygen. It has a pale blue color and is strongly paramagnetism. Liquid oxygen has a density of 1.141 g/cm? and is moderately cryogenics ...
to obey Curie's law

Curie's law

In a paramagnetic material the magnetization of the material is directly proportional to an applied magnetic field. However, if the material is heated, this proportionality is reduced: for a fixed value of the field, the magnetization is inversely proportional to temperature....
. Today it seems Lewis was off, but not by much: computer simulations indicate that although there are no stable O₄ molecules in liquid oxygen, O₂ molecules do tend to associate in pairs with antiparallel spin

Spin (physics)

In quantum mechanics, spin is a fundamental property of atomic nucleus, hadrons, and elementary particles. For particles with non-zero spin, spin direction is an important intrinsic degrees of freedom ....
s, forming transient O₄ units.

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Encyclopedia

The tetraoxygen molecule (O₄), also called oxozone was first predicted in 1924 by Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert N. Lewis

Liquid oxygen

Curie's law

Spin (physics)

Solid oxygen

Solid oxygen forms at normal atmospheric pressure at a temperature below 54.36 K . Solid oxygen O2, like liquid oxygen, is a clear substance with a light diffuse sky radiation color caused by absorption in the red ....
existed in its e-phase (at pressures above 10 GPa) as O₄. However, in 2006, it was shown by X-ray crystallography

X-ray crystallography

X-ray crystallography is a method of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal, in which a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal and scatters into many different directions....
that this stable phase

Phase (matter)

In the physical sciences, a phase is a region of space , throughout which all physical properties of a material are essentially uniform. Examples of physical properties include density, refractive index, and chemical composition....
known as e oxygen or red oxygen is in fact

Solid oxygen

Solid oxygen forms at normal atmospheric pressure at a temperature below 54.36 K . Solid oxygen O2, like liquid oxygen, is a clear substance with a light diffuse sky radiation color caused by absorption in the red ....
. Nevertheless, tetraoxygen has been detected as a short-lived chemical species

Chemical species

Chemical species are atoms, molecules, molecular fragments, ions, etc., as entities being subjected to a chemical process or to a measurement. Generally, a chemical species can be defined as an ensemble of chemically identical molecular entity that can explore the same set of molecular energy levels on a characteristic or delineated time scal...
in mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique for the determination of the elemental composition of a sample or molecule. It is also used for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and other chemical compounds....
experiments.

Free molecule

Theoretical calculations have predicted the existence of metastable O₄ molecules with two different shapes: a "puckered" square like cyclobutane

Cyclobutane

Cyclobutane, C4H8, with a molecular mass of 56.107g/mol, is a four carbon alkane in which all the carbon atoms are arranged cyclically, hence cyclobutane....
, and a "pinwheel" with three oxygen atoms surrounding a central one in a trigonal planar formation similar to boron trifluoride

Boron trifluoride

Boron trifluoride is the chemical compound with the chemical formula BF3. This pungent colourless toxic gas forms white fumes in moist air....
.

Theoretical structures of metastable O₄.

D_2d structure	D_3h structure

In 2001, a team at the University of Rome La Sapienza

University of Rome La Sapienza

Sapienza University of Rome is a coeducational, autonomous state university in Rome, Italy. It is the largest European university and the most ancient of the city's three state-funded universities; Sapienza was founded in 1303, University of Rome Tor Vergata in 1982, and Third University of Rome in 1992....
conducted a neutralization-reionization mass spectrometry experiment to investigate the structure of free O₄ molecules. Their results did not agree with either of the two proposed molecular structures, but they did agree with a complex

Complex (chemistry)

In chemistry, a complex, also called a "coordination compound" or "metal complex", is a structure consisting of a central atom or molecule connected to surrounding atoms or molecules....
between two O₂ molecules, one in the ground state and the other in a specific excited state

Excited state

Excitation is an elevation in energy level above an arbitrary baseline energy state. In physics there is a specific technical definition for energy level which is often associated with an atom being excited to an excited state....
.

Tetraoxygen

Free molecule

See also