Energy & Green Tech

Metal organic frameworks could turn greenhouse gas into 'gold'

Fluorine can be a beneficial ingredient in medicines because of its excellent pharmacological properties, according to Phillip Milner, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences ...

Engineering

Automation speeds the search for stable proteins

Harnessing the power of robotics and machine intelligence, researchers from Princeton Engineering and Rutgers University have found a way to design stable proteins in a fraction of the time of current state of the art. The ...

Energy & Green Tech

Building a better, cheaper battery for power grids

Batteries do the heavy lifting to store excess solar energy on power grids for use after sundown, but to operate, they also rely on pricey elements like platinum.

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Chemical compound

A chemical compound is a pure chemical substance consisting of two or more different chemical elements that can be separated into simpler substances by chemical reactions and that have a unique and defined chemical structure. Chemical compounds consist of a fixed ratio of atoms that are held together in a defined spatial arrangement by chemical bonds. Chemical compounds can be compound molecules held together by covalent bonds, salts held together by ionic bonds, metallic compounds held together by metallic bonds, or complexes held together by coordinate covalent bonds. Substances such as pure chemical elements and elemental molecules consisting of multiple atoms of a single element (such as H2, S8, etc.) are not considered chemical compounds.

Elements form compounds to become more stable. They become stable when they have the maximum number of possible electrons in their outermost energy level, which is normally two or eight valence electrons. This is the reason that noble gases do not frequently react: they already possess eight valence electrons (the exception being helium, which requires only two valence electrons to achieve stability).

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