Sunday, October 14, 2018

electronic configuration - Why does Boron only need 6 valence electrons unlike the standard 8?


So I was a bit confused. Hydrogen and Boron seem to be the only outliers to the octet rule. Hydrogen makes sense because it has only one shell and 2 electrons complete its shell. Boron's configuration, however, is 1s22s22p1. Having 6 valence electrons would mean having a configuration of 1s22s22p4 which doesn't seem as stable as 1s22s22p6 or even as stable as 1s22s22p3 since one would think that there is repulsion going on between electrons in the first orbital of p in 1s22s22p4. Thanks in advance!




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