What is inorganic chemistry?
Inorganic chemistry covers the elements and compounds that are not built on carbon chains. In practice that means most of the periodic table: metals and their ores, salts, acids and bases, ceramics, semiconductors, and the coordination complexes formed when metal ions bind to surrounding molecules.
The boundary with organic chemistry is a convention rather than a law, and a few carbon compounds sit on the inorganic side by tradition. Carbonates, cyanides, carbon dioxide and the carbides are all studied as inorganic species even though carbon appears in each.
What it deals with
- Periodic trends: atomic radius, ionisation energy, electronegativity and the reactivity patterns they explain
- Ionic bonding and the structure of crystalline salts
- Acids, bases and the different definitions chemists use for them
- Transition metals, variable oxidation states, and the colours they produce
- Coordination compounds: ligands, complex ions and their geometry
- Extraction metallurgy, minerals and industrial processes
Where it shows up
Inorganic chemistry is behind catalysts in industry, pigments in paint, the silicon in electronics, and the metal ions at the heart of enzymes. The definitions below give each term plainly, with the examples students meet in class and in the laboratory.
