What are the conjugate acid and base of H_2PO_4?

1 Answer
anor277
Aug 25, 2016

Simply add or substract a proton from H_3PO_4.

Explanation:

Phosphoric acid is the parent acid, i.e. H_3PO_4.

Remove a proton from this, we get, H_2PO_4^- as the conjugate base. Or rather phosphoric acid donates a proton to water to give H_3O^+ and H_2PO_4^-.

And remove a proton from H_2PO_4^- to get HPO_4^(2-) as the conjugate base.

In water that's about as far as you go. But when we speak of conjugate acidity/basicity all we are doing is exchanging protons, H^+ with the solvent. Mass and charge are conserved, as they must be.

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