Like other noble gas elements, xenon strongly resists forming chemical bonds. Indeed, that inertness makes its isotopes important tracers of the evolution of planetary atmospheres and interiors. Yet the fact that the element can react, albeit reluctantly, was predicted a century ago by Walther Kossel (and later, in 1932, by Linus Pauling), who realized that Xe, with its soft, highly polarizable p shell and relatively small ionization potential, should form compounds with strongly electronegative atoms such as fluorine or oxygen.
That prediction was borne out in 1962 when Neil Bartlett noticed an orange-yellow solid precipitate as soon as he exposed Xe to platinum hexafluoride gas. Syntheses of dozens of Xe compounds soon followed, nearly all containing fluorine or oxygen. But all the xenon oxides produced in the half century since that first demonstration of reactivity have proven unstable at ambient conditions, and some are dangerously explosive.
Applying pressure can forestall...
