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Topic: Why does hydrogen form metallic hydride like LiH ?  (Read 3615 times)

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Offline Aakash

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Why does hydrogen form metallic hydride like LiH ?
« on: November 26, 2013, 11:36:51 AM »
Why does hydrogen form metallic hydride like LiH when both the metals want to lose electrons?

Offline Corribus

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Re: Why does hydrogen form metallic hydride like LiH ?
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2013, 03:19:35 PM »
You are anthropomorphizing too much.  What makes you think they want to "lose" electrons?
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?  - Richard P. Feynman

Offline Hunter2

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Re: Why does hydrogen form metallic hydride like LiH ?
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2013, 01:19:52 AM »
Hydrogen is able to get the noble gas shell from Helium with two electrons. So it is possible to form Hydrids. Like LiH, CaH2, etc.

Offline Enthalpy

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Re: Why does hydrogen form metallic hydride like LiH ?
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2013, 10:52:19 AM »
No atom loses electrons easily, because the resulting positive ion attracts electrons.

An electron transferred from one atom to an other can happen in a strict ionic bond, when one atoms attracts the electron much more than the other does - AND it needs some mechanism to help the resulting ions keep stable.

In a solid, positive ions are closely surrounded by many negative ones (and negative by many positive ones) so that the electric potential of the ions is not too big.

In a polar solvent, liquid molecules put the end of opposite charge near each ion, which again reduces the electric potential.

Other bonds - which can be strong as well - rather put electrons of both atoms on a new common orbital, which can be more favourable than the separate atoms. And since most atoms are already bound in molecules (H2, O2, N2...) a reaction has to break the old molecules first, so it's a mere re-arrangement of the bonds.

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