Ionization Energy
Q1: What is Ionization Energy?
Answer:
Ionization energy can be defined as the minimum amount of energy required to remove the valence electron i.e. the most loosely bound electron from an isolated gaseous atom or ion.
Q2: What factors govern Ionization Energy?
Answer:
Factors governing ionization energy are,
- If an atom or ion is positively charged then the electrons are more tightly held by the nucleus, so the ionization energy is high.
- If the number of shells are less i.e. the electrons are near to the nucleus then the IE is high and vice versa.
- The IE is less when there are more than 1 electrons in a shell due to the inter electronic repulsions.
Q3: Why does the ionization energy increase with the increase in charge?
Answer:
As the charge on the atom increases, the inter electronic repulsions become less. Thus the electrons are more closer to the nucleus and held more tightly. Thus it becomes difficult to remove the electron and hence the ionization energy increases with the increase in charge of the atom.
Q4: Which has the highest ionization energy between nitrogen and oxygen?
Answer:
Nitrogen has the highest ionization energy between nitrogen and oxygen as nitrogen has half-filled electronic configuration so it requires more energy to extract electrons from the Nitrogen’s orbit.
Q5: Which of the following element has the highest first ionization energy He+, Li+2, Be+3
Answer:
As we can see that all these ions have one electron each. So we will compare their nuclear charge because higher the nuclear charge, higher is the IE because electrons are more tightly held by the nucleus.
Thus, Be+3 has ionization Energy.
Ionization Energy
Ionization energy can be defined as the minimum amount of energy required to remove the valence electron i.e. the most loosely bound electron from an isolated gaseous atom or ion. It is important to note the term isolated gaseous atom as if the atom is not isolated, then the energy required may be more due to the interatomic forces.
Let’s learn about Ionization Energy in detail in this article.