Why carbon undergoes catenation

Chapter Carbon and its Compounds - Exercise [Page ]. Page Share 0. Select a course. My Profile. My Profile [view full profile]. Inform you about time table of exam. Inform you about new question papers. New video tutorials information. Carbon is Carbon is most well known for its properties of catenation, with organic chemistry essentially being the study of catenated carbon structures otherwise known as catenae. However, carbon is by no means the only element capable of forming such catenae, and several other main group elements are capable of forming an expansive range of catenae, including silicon, sulfur and boron.

The versatile chemistry of elemental sulfur is largely due to catenation. In the native state, sulfur exists as S8 molecules. On heating these rings open and link together giving rise to increasingly long chains, as evidenced by the progressive increase in viscosity as the chains lengthen. Selenium and tellurium also show variants of these structural motifs.

Silicon can form sigma bonds to other silicon atoms and disilane is the parent of this class of compounds. Silanes higher in molecular weight than disilane decompose to polymeric polysilicon hydride and hydrogen. These long chain compounds have surprising electronic properties - high electrical conductivity, for example - arising from sigma delocalization of the electrons in the chain.

Small rings or clusters are more common. However, these bonds are less stable than the carbon analogues. Disilane is quite reactive compared to ethane. Disilylenes are quite rare, unlike alkenes. Examples of disilynes, long thought to be too unstable to be isolated[4] were reported in The ability of certain main group elements to catenate is currently the subject of research into inorganic polymers.

Catenation means "self linking" and carbon is not the only element which shows this property ,for instance, chlorine also have catenation property Cl2,oxygen also have catenation property O2,O3, Only the catenation property of Carbon is greater than any other element.

Carbon atom is small in size. Thus, its bonds with another carbon atom is quite strong as the shared pair of electron is quite close to the nucleus. Thus, carbon atoms often react to form long chains. Related Questions. Jan 3, — Received cash from Balan Rs. Recommended Articles. Class 12 Tuition in Delhi.

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Please to register for this class. Already a member? To overcome this problem carbon undergoes bonding by sharing its valence electrons.

This allows it to be covalently bonded to one, two, three or four carbon atoms or atoms of other elements or groups of atoms. Let us see how carbon forms the single, double and triple bonds in the following examples.

Carbon atom has four electrons in its outermost shell. Thus, it requires four more electrons to acquire a stable noble gas configuration. Each of the hydrogen atoms has only one electron in its outermost shell and requires one more electron to complete its outermost shell to acquire He configuration.

This is done as follows. The electronic configurations of carbon and oxygen are:. Thus, each carbon atom requires four, and each oxygen atom requires two more electrons to acquire noble gas configurations. To achieve this, two oxygen atoms form a double covalent bond with carbon as follows. Carbon atom has four electrons in its outermost shell and hydrogen atoms have only one electron in its outermost shell. Carbon share one of its electrons with hydrogen to form a single bond each.

Each carbon then requires three more electrons to acquire a stable configuration of the nearest noble gas neon.