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Oxocarbons

Oxocarbons are compounds consisting wholly of carbon and oxygen. We probably have already seen some of notable ones like carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO₂), carbon suboxide (C₃O₂) and the mellitic anhydride (C₁₂O₉), but there exist many other ones although most of them are unstable or metastable. For example, dicarbon monoxide radical (:C=C=O), carbon trioxide (CO₃), carbon tetroxide (CO₄), carbon pentoxide (CO₅), carbon hexoxide (CO₆) and 1,2-dioxetanedione (C₂O₄) are among reactive carbon oxides found only in extreme situations. There also exist hypothetical ones like oxalic anhydride (C₂O₃ or O=(C₂O)=O) and ethylene dione (C₂O₂ or O=C=C=O) that have been studied theoretically but haven’t been observed practically. Also among interesting ones, we have linear or cyclic polymers of carbon monoxide (-CO-)_n (polyketones) and linear or cyclic polymers of carbon dioxide (-CO₂-)_n, such as the dimer 1,3-dioxetanedione (C₂O₄) and the trimer 1,3,5-trioxanetrione (C₃O₆) where they are also among either hypothetical ones or unstable synthesized ones except for cases like carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide themselves. Many new stable or metastable oxides have been synthesized since the 1960s, such as: C₁₀O₈ (Hammond, 1963), C₆O₆ (Sauer and others, 1967), C₁₂O₁₂ and C₁₀O₁₀ (Verter and others, 1968), C₈O₈ and C₉O₉ (Nallaiah, 1984), C₂₄O₆ (Rubin and others, 1990), C₄O₆ (Strazzolini and others, 1998).

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