What is "alkane" ?

[Externet]

Hi.

 

What is alkane in "silver alkane" ? Does such material/compound exist ?

Thanks

[Enthalpy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkane

Wiki is the first place where to look. It's too often the last one, though it shouldn't.

[Fuzzwood]

A silver alkane is an alkane from which a hydrogen atom (pretty much always from a terminal C) is replaced by a metal, in this case silver. It makes for a very potent base and can even start anionic polymerisations.

[math-helper]

When silver replaces H-atom(s) in an alkane, silver alkane is formed. These are basic in nature.

[LawfulBlade]

Hi.

 

What is alkane in "silver alkane" ? Does such material/compound exist ?

Thanks

 

Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons (with single bonds). In English, it is a carbon atom, which requires bonds with four other atoms to be saturated and stable, and those other atoms need to either be hydrogen or carbon. The simplest would be one carbon with four hydrogens attached: methane. The next simplest is one carbon attached to another carbon, each with three hydrogens attached: ethane. You can simply keep adding carbons to the backbone.

 

When you replace any one of those hydrogens with something else, it's technically no longer an alkane. If you do it with a metal, like silver, it's technically called an organometallic.

 

These do exist, both naturally and in the laboratory, and are of huge importance in manufacturing compounds. I've never heard of a silver organometallic, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm no organic chemist. Copper, lithium, and Grignard reagents are what I'm most familiar with. The bond they take in these compounds is peculiar in that it's much stronger than an ionic bond, but much weaker than a covalent bond.