Cosmobiologist

S-N

Re your comment "Sulfur does react with nitrogen and forms a range of stable as well as unstable compounds" You have examples of S8 + N2 to give compounds? That fact would be very great interest to me and would allow us to retain your edit. For the meantime and pending discussions, I am going to revert your change. In terms of its heat of formation, S4N4 is very endothermic. For this reason, I am skeptical, respectfully so. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:17, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking immediately of S4N4 and the family of SN compounds that are derived from it. You're right that the enthalpy is such that the reaction is endothermic, but the reaction can still occur. I think perhaps the language should be changed then to state that sulfur does not undergo spontaneous reaction with nitrogen under standard conditions. The way it reads now makes it sound like there aren't any compounds with SN bonds, which isn't true. I am curious, though, why you say this is of great interest to you. Are you working in the realm of sulfur or nitrogen chemistry? I'm currently writing a manuscript on some work I've done on allotropes of sulfur occurring in natural settings. I don't study much about nitrogen, but have been delving deeper and deeper into sulfur chemistry lately. Cosmobiologist (talk) 18:50, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

good point but we are not suggesting that S-N compounds do not exist. The point to impress readers with is the near universality of its reactions, only N2 and the inert gases are unreactive. Not just standard conditions, virtually any condition close. No one need worry that the huge stockpiles of sulfur around the world are about to react with atmospheric N2. So I think we are ok. Anyway, the S-N business is pretty specialized stuff - there are zero binary S-N compounds in nature, unfortunately. Good luck in your writings. Steudel has written a lot about the occurrence of the various allotropes. --Smokefoot (talk) 19:09, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. I still find some ambiguity to the sentence (since I would consider reaction in the laboratory to count as one set of conditions that drives the reaction to form an SN bond). Steudal's work has been most helpful over the years. I've probably read some of his papers a half-dozen times. He's uploaded a document to his Research Gate account that lists almost every major publication on sulfur chemistry since the 1930's! Cosmobiologist (talk) 19:38, 18 November 2015 (UTC)