Did someone really get flourine and xenon to bond? If Xenon has a full outer energy level, how did they do this? Did it take a lot of energy? Was it stable? How long did it last?
I remember seeing Xenon being combined with Hydrogen in a film once. If I recall rightly, Xenon can be ionized because the outer electron shell has a comparatively weak binding to the nucleus. It requires very high temperatures and maybe a catalist (nickel?).
Anyway, here’s an article on Xenon-Halides. According to the article:
“Xenon is now known to be very reactive with fluorine, making no less than three well known fluorine compounds. All three fluorine compounds are powerful fluorinating agents, and have to be synthesized in carefully controlled reactions to prevent contamination of the product by fluorinated impurities11. Compounds XeF2, XeF4 and XeF6 have all been successfully synthesized, characterized and analyzed, XeF8 had reportedly been synthesized, but subsequent attempts to resynthesize it failed.”
According to http://www.webelements.com, Krypton forms a flouride as well (KrF2), and Xenon also forms a couple of oxides (XeO3 and XeO4). I seem to vaguely remember the bit about nickle as a catalyst as well.
This site provides a nore complete list:
http://chemistry.about.com/science/chemistry/library/weekly/aa092898a.htm
It claims that Helium, Neon and Argon are the only ones that are still truly inert, though flourides may be possible. Krypton, Xenon and Radon have all been shown to form compounds, including about 80 Xenon compounds. I would guess that less research is done with Radon because of the difficulty of working with a radioactive material, and less potential use for the resultant compounds.
I looked into this romantic topic of the inert gases being made nert some time ago and remember something about yellow crystals and VIOLENT EXPLOSIVES made from xenon and either fluorine or oxygen, so beware. Don’t try to make them at home.
I was under the impression that at least short-lived compounds had been made of every one of the inert gases except Helium, most often, indeed, with halogens. (yeah, even Radon, although it must have cost them a bit to scrape enough of it together to play with). Neon and Argon did not form stable compounds, though, IIRC.
Nowadays scientists can pretty much make anything thing they want bond together; it’s just hard to make them stick. Xenon is quite capable of forming a few stable compounds, generally involving Fluorine, and there is always a huge list of unstable compounds. Xenon Fluoride (XeF) for example, is known as an excimer, and is one of the common gasses used in excimer lasers.
You can find a brief description of Xenon at WebElements. There is mention of some Xenon compounds there as well. Their individual descriptions can be found in the lower right corner of the page.