Sulfur Characteristics

sulfur

Sulfur is the chemical element with atomic number 16.Sulfur forms polyatomic molecules with different chemical formulas, with the best-known allotrope being octasulfur, cyclo-S8. Octasulfur is a soft, bright-yellow solid with only a faint odor, similar to that of matches.It melts at 115.21 °C, boils at 444.6 °C and sublimes easily.At 95.2 °C, below its melting temperature, cyclo-octasulfur changes from α-octasulfur to the β-polymorph.The structure of the S8 ring is virtually unchanged by this phase change, which affects the intermolecular interactions.
Sulfur burns with a blue flame concomitant with formation of sulfur dioxide, notable for its peculiar suffocating odor. Sulfur is insoluble in water but soluble in carbon disulfide and, to a lesser extent, in other nonpolar organic solvents, such as benzene and toluene. The first and the second ionization energies of sulfur are 999.6 and 2252 kJ·mol/1, respectively. Despite such figures, S2+ is rare, S4, 6+ being more common. The fourth and sixth ionization energies are 4556 and 8495.8 kJ·mol/1, the magnitude of the figures caused by electron transfer between orbitals; these states are only stable with strong oxidants as fluorine, oxygen, and chlorine. Read more:High purity sulfur