Dioxidanylium
chemical compound
Dioxidanylium, which is protonated molecular oxygen, or just protonated oxygen, is an ion with formula HO+2.
It is formed when hydrogen containing substances combust, and exists in the ionosphere, and in plasmas that contain oxygen and hydrogen. Oxidation by O2 in superacids could be by way of the production of protonated molecular oxygen.
It is the conjugate acid of dioxygen. The proton affinity of dioxygen (O2) is 4.4 eV.
Significance
Protonated molecular oxygen is of interest in trying to detect dioxygen in space. Because Earth's atmosphere is full of O2, its spectrum from a space object is impossible to observe from the ground. However HO+2 should be much more detectable.
Formation
Reaction of dioxygenyl O+2 with hydrogen:
O+•2 + H2 → HO+2 + H•
The reaction of the trihydrogen cation with dioxygen is approximately thermoneutral:
O2 + H+3 → HO+2 + H2
When atomic hydrogen, created in an electric discharge is rapidly cooled with oxygen and condensed in solid neon, several reactive ions and molecules are produced. These include HO2 (hydroperoxyl), HOHOH−, H2O(HO), HOHO− as well as HO+2. This reaction also forms hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and hydrogen tetroxide (H2O4).
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27110275. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dioxidanylium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.