Give reasons for the following:
(i) CCl4 is immiscible in water, whereas SiCl4 is easily hydrolyzed.
(ii) Carbon has a strong tendency for catenation compared to silicon.
(i); CCl4 is non-polar and covalent in nature and water is polar in nature. Thus,CCl4 is insoluble in water and secondly the carbon atom doesn’t have empty d-orbital to accommodate the electrons donated by the oxygen atom of the water.On another hand SiCl4 is soluble in water because the Si atom has empty d-orbital to accommodate the electrons from oxygen atom.
Thus, SiCl4is easily hydrolyzed whereas CCl4 is insoluble in water.
(ii); The decrease in catenation property is linked with M – M bond energy which decreases from carbon to tin in group 14.
The greater the M-M bond energy the greater is the tendency to form catenation.
The energy difference between the Carbon-Carbon and silicon-silicon bond energy is very high i.e. the tendency of carbon to form catenation is greater than the silicon.