Scientists Create Compound With a Single Element 163
rocketman768 writes "An international team of researchers including scientists at the Carnegie Institution has discovered a new chemical compound that consists of a single element: boron. Chemical compounds are conventionally defined as substances consist of two or more elements, but the researchers found that at high pressure and temperature pure boron can assume two distinct forms that bond together to create a novel 'compound' called boron boride."
Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this not an allotrope [wikipedia.org]? I'm not a chemist so excuse me if the answer seems obvious to those with a better understanding.
That's exactly what I was wondering. The title made me wonder "what? graphite? diamonds?"
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Except of course it isn't REALLY that simple... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually no (Score:3, Insightful)
In a crystal of table salt there are no molecules. No one Na+ is associated with any one given Cl-. The crystal is made up of alternating Na and Cl atoms, sort of like a checkerboard.
Highly ionic crystalline solids are compounds, but not composed of molecules, and in fact NaCl is NEVER a molecule. In aqueous solution it dissociates entirely. If you melt it you still have a situation where the various atoms move freely in the now liquid substance.
Very few highly ionic substances, salts, even CAN be vaporized. They are so polar that at the extreme temperatures required you basically just tear atoms off the stuff and end up with a big cloud of ions.
In a sense you could think of a crystal of salt as a single large macromolecule. Diamond would be an example of a somewhat similar covalently bonded structure.
Re:Except of course it isn't REALLY that simple... (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA, actually, Boron Boride is composed of two separate molecules, both of which are allotropes.
So, it's not really BB, but B2B7 or so... I'm less interested in reading TFA again, but you should be able to look it up yourself.