Talk:Helium hydride ion

References

Hiby, Julius W. (1939). "Massenspektrographische Untersuchungen an Wasserstoff- und Heliumkanalstrahlen (H3+, H2-, HeH+, HeD+, He-)". Annalen der Physik. 426 (5): 473–487. doi:10.1002/andp.19394260506. First 1986? --Stone (talk) 18:07, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Even earlier: Coulson, C. A.; Duncanson, W. E. (1938). "Comparison of Wave-Functions for HeH++ and HeH+". Proc. Roy. Soc. A. 165: 90. doi:10.1098/rspa.1938.0047.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). Apparently "first studied by Wolfgang Ketterle in 1986" refers to the first spectroscopic studies of the neutral helium hydride. I found these two papers by Ketterle: W. Ketterle, H. Figger, and H. Walther (1985). "Emission spectra of bound helium hydride". Phys. Rev. Lett. 55: 2941–2944. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.55.2941.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link); W Ketterle, A Dodhy, H Walther (1986). "Bound—free emission of the helium hydride molecule". Chemical Physics Letters. 129 (1): 76–78. doi:10.1016/0009-2614(86)80172-5.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). --Itub (talk) 15:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Move to Helium hydride ion?

After a quick literature search, I'm left with the impression that helium hydride ion and helium hydride molecular ion are used much more often than hydrohelium ion. (Actually, the most common is HeH⁺, but I'd rather use words.) Should we rename the article?

Just thinking aloud, "hydride" suggests a H^- in there, which seems a bit strange. Is that what people really call it? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 09:47, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly what I thought, but people do call it that way. I suppose the rationale is that the neutral molecule, HeH, is reasonably called helium hydride (unless you want to call it hydrogen heliide?), so this cation is the molecular ion (in the mass spectrometry sense) of helium hydride. --Itub (talk) 09:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

The rename sounds like a good idea. Use the most common term that's not an abbreviation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:00, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect image

The current image is misleading - HHe⁺ is isoelectronic with H₂, and therefore the two atoms in the cation should have identical size. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 02:12, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I doubt they are the same size. With a higher charge on the nucleus the He+ would be smaller. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:06, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Then the image is still wrong, because it shows the He⁺ (cyan) larger than the H (silvery grey). Double sharp (talk) 15:00, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

According to MO theory, the positive charge is distributed over the whole anion, not localised to one atom. Plasmic Physics (talk) 19:53, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I suppose we need to find a reference that has done a numerical calculation of the distribution of electron probability in this ion. Bonds can have a polar nature, and a He+ ion is smaller than a H atom. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Compound?

The article is very keen on not referring to the helium hydride ion as a molecule, which is in line with IUPAC Gold book's definition ("An electrically neutral entity..."). The term compound is also avoided, though I could not find a similar definition, for me compounds are also electrically neutral, and thus I consider helium hydride ion to be a polyatomic ion, not a compound. However, the article is categorized in "helium compounds", and the navbox also describes this ion as a compound, while for neon it says no compounds have been identified yet – although neon also forms heteronuclear polyatomic ions. I believe this should be clarified and a uniform terminology be used. In my opinion these are not compounds, but I would be very much interested in others view. Szaszicska (talk) 17:39, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. Plasmic Physics (talk) 21:53, 28 June 2013 (UTC)