Cations ionization energy

The second ionization energy, /2, of an element is the energy needed to remove an electron from a singly charged gas-phase cation. For copper,... 

Because ionization energy is a measure of how difficult it is to remove an electron, elements with low ionization energies can be expected to form cations readily and to conduct electricity in their solid forms. Elements with high ionization energies are unlikely to form cations and are unlikely to conduct electricity. 

The low ionization energies of elements at the lower left of the periodic table account for their metallic character. A block of metal consists of a collection of cations of the element surrounded by a sea of valence electrons that the atoms have lost (Fig. 1.53). Only elements with low ionization energies—the members of the s block, the d block, the f block, and the lower left of the p block—can form metallic solids, because only they can lose electrons easily. 

The valence electron configuration of the atoms of the Group 2 elements is ns1. The second ionization energy is low enough to be recovered from the lattice enthalpy (Fig. 14.18). Flence, the Group 2 elements occur with an oxidation number of +2, as the cation M2+, in all their compounds. Apart from a tendency toward nonmetallic character in beryllium, the elements have all the chemical characteristics of metals, such as forming basic oxides and hydroxides. 

A multielectron atom can lose more than one electron, but ionization becomes more difficult as cationic charge increases. The first three ionization energies for a magnesium atom in the gas phase provide an illustration. (Ionization energies are measured on gaseous elements to ensure that the atoms are isolated from one another.)... 

C08-0023. Iron and cobalt form compounds that can be viewed as containing cations, but nickel does not. Use the ionization energies in Appendix C to predict which other transition metal elements are unlikely to form stable cations with charges greater than +2. 

Experiments and calculations both indicate that electron transfer from potassium to water is spontaneous and rapid, whereas electron transfer from silver to water does not occur. In redox terms, potassium oxidizes easily, but silver resists oxidation. Because oxidation involves the loss of electrons, these differences in reactivity of silver and potassium can be traced to how easily each metal loses electrons to become an aqueous cation. One obvious factor is their first ionization energies, which show that it takes much more energy to remove an electron from silver than from potassium 731 kJ/mol for Ag and 419 kJ/mol for K. The other alkali metals with low first ionization energies, Na, Rb, Cs, and Fr, all react violently with water. 

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