Can you name the following ionic compound Fel2?

1 Answer
Apr 23, 2014

FeI_2 is an ionic compound called Ferrous Iodide
or Iron (II) Iodide.

Iron is a transition metal and has oxidation states of Fe^(+2) or Fe^(+3). Since the iodide ion only has a charge of I^-1 and there are two iodide ions in the molecule, this informs us that the iron is in the Fe^(+2) oxidation state.

There are two types of naming, the Systemic or Stock name using a roman numeral to identify the oxidation state therefore, we use
Iron (II) for the Fe^(+2) oxidation state. Or we can use the common name identifying the Fe^(+2) oxidation state as ferrous. The lower oxidation state ends in the suffix -ous and the higher oxidation state will end in the suffix -ic, Fe^(+2) is ferrous and Fe^(+3) is ferric.

FeI_2 is called Ferrous Iodide or Iron (II) Iodide.
FeI_3 is called Ferric Iodide or Iron (III) Iodide

Other examples of transition metals would include Cu^(+1) is cuprous, Copper (I) and Cu^(+3) is cupric, Copper (II) or Sn^(+2) is stannous, Tin (II) and Sn^(+4) is stannic, Tin (IV).

I hope this was helpful.
SMARTERTEACHER