Xenon (Xe) is a chemical element with atomic number 54 and symbol Xe. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas found in the Earth’s atmosphere in trace amounts. Xenon occurs naturally as a by-product of the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium.
A xenon atom has 54 electrons arranged in shells of 2, 8, 18, 18, 8 electrons. The outermost shell of electrons is called the valence shell and for xenon this consists of the 4th energy level which can hold a maximum of 32 electrons. The Lewis dot structure for xenon shows that all eight valence electrons are used to form bonds:
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Each line represents one pair of shared electrons or a single bond. The atoms are shown surrounded by electron pairs that are not involved in bonding; these are called lone pairs. In total there are 24 electron pairs surrounding the central atoms giving rise to the octahedral molecular geometry for XeF6.
The full ground state electronic configuration for Xenon is [Kr]4d10 5s2 5p6 and its elemental category is noble gas. Noble gases have full valence shells; they do not readily form compounds because their valence orbitals are complete. However, under extreme conditions some noble gases will react with other elements to form compounds. For example KrF2 can be formed from Krypton and Fluorine by bombarding Kryton atoms with high energy Fluorine ions.
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