Neutral Compounds of Helium, Neon, and Argon

Soon after the discovery of the noble gas elements, many laboratories made great efforts to induce chemical reactions with Ng. Unsuccessful attempts were made to enforce reactions with compounds known to be very reactive, such as CI2, KMn04, red-hot Mg, alkaline metals, and many others. A survey of unsuccessful attempts to induce chemical reactions with Ng is given in Ref. 122. By 1916 it was established that He, Ne, Ar as well as the other noble gases were chemically inert. 

An early report of weakly bound noble gas species came from Druyvesteyn 

In the following, we will shortly summarize the knowledge about neutral compounds of the light noble gas elements bound by van der Waals interaction including the border-line structures NgBeO. Although no chemically bound molecule of He, Ne, and Ar is known as yet, there is reason to believe that argon compounds are feasible. This is discussed at the end of this section. 

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