Which is more stable vanadium or chromium? And why?

1 Answer
Truong-Son N.
Jul 22, 2017

It is not a physically reasonable comparison to make. They are different elements, and each of them are as stable as that element can be in their respective ground states.

[Chemical stability is a thermodynamic phenomenon, and is not indicative of chemical reactivity, which is kinetic in nature.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability)

Now, if you meant which element is more prone to participating in chemical reactions, it would usually be vanadium, as it has lower ionization energies for comparable oxidation states (up to #+V#).

If we were to compare their ionization energies, we could see that the atom with the lower ionization energy has a greater tendency to lose the #n#th electron in the #+(n-1)# charge state to form the #+n# charge state.

Using data from NIST, I get:

However, #"Cr"# can attain the higher oxidation state, at which point it becomes more reactive as #"Cr"^(+5)# and #"Cr"^(+6)#, forming the #+VI# and #+VII# oxidation states, respectively.

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