Which of the following fluorides of Xenon does not exist?
Which of the following fluorides of Xenon does not exist?
$\mathrm{XeF}_3$
$\mathrm{XeF}_2$
$\mathrm{XeF}_6$
$\mathrm{XeF}_4$
Solution
Xe forms fluorides of even number of fluorine atoms. This is so because the promotion of one, two or three electrons from the $5 \mathrm{p}$ - orbital will result in two, four or six half-filled orbitals and this will give $\mathrm{XeF}_2, \mathrm{XeF}_4$ or $\mathrm{XeF}_6$ respectively.