Hi everyone!

 

While browsing through a chemical database site I came upon an entry for nitrogen dioxide that showed the nitrogen having a positive charge: http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=3609161&loc=ec_rcs

 

Is this correct? Shouldn't this molecule actually be neutral? Have they confused it for something else?

 

Thanks.

You are right, it should be neutral.

unless it's a nitrous ion.

 

in the nitrogen dioxide it should be shown with a resonant structure

Nitrogen has a formal charge of +1 with an unpaired electron but one of the oxygens has a -1 so the molecule is net neutral for nitrogen dioxide. This goes for both of the main resonance forms. You could have seen a nitronium ion: [ce] NO_{2}^+[/ce]

The site references nitrogen dioxide, both the name, formula and CAS number to that page - which was apparently an error. I'm told that they'll be trying to fix it asap.

 

Thanks all!