Talk:Fluorous acid

Since fluorine is the most electronegative of all elements, it's highly unlikely to me that it will form an oxoacid with +3 oxidation state. Besides, the image used in the article is for chlorous acid (chlorine is less electronegative than oxygen). I think a H-O-O-F structure, i.e. "peroxyhypofluorous acid" is much more probable, as an intermediate between hydrogen peroxide and dioxygen difluoride. Zhieaanm (talk) 01:43, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't matter what you think is most probable, this article is supposed to cover the conjugate acid of dioxidofluorate, so H-O-F-O it is. 131.247.140.18 (talk) 19:11, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just being polite: in blunt words, this structure is impossible. Will revert. Zhieaanm (talk) 00:47, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some of these fluorine compounds containing oxygen in its 0 oxidation state. They are unstable, of course. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 21:10, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are two questions here - nomenclature and existence. The name fluorous acid does imply H-O-F-O, by analogy with chlorous acid H-O-Cl-O. The peroxy structure H-O-O-F would have another name, perhaps hydrogen fluoroperoxide or peroxyhypofluorous acid as suggested here.

However this does not mean that H-O-F-O actually exists and therefore deserves a Wikipedia article. The leading textbook "Inorganic Chemistry" by C.E. Housecroft and A.G. Sharpe (2nd edn, Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2005) says (p.485) that "Fluorine is unique among the halogens in forming no species in which it has a formal oxidation state other than -1. The only known oxoacid is hypofluorous acid, HOF ..."

The only source now in the article is the EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute) database, which just gives the name and structure, with no reference to any experimental research showing the existence of H-O-F-O. How do we know that this means anything more than "If this name corresponds to a real molecule, this would be its structure"?

In the absence of a source giving evidence that this compound is real, I think this article should just be deleted. Dirac66 (talk) 02:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Dirac - the article should be deleted. Otherwise we will end up hosting articles on sodium dichloride and xenon iodides. But given the dynamics at Wikipedia it could be difficult to delete the article. Better to convert this one to a redirect to fluorine and within fluorine explain that this stuff like this does not exist.--Smokefoot (talk) 13:52, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Or perhaps a redirect to the analog chlorous acid, which already has a paragraph explaining the nonexistence of the other three HXO₂. Dirac66 (talk) 15:20, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]