Osmium tetrabromide is the

inorganic compound An inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds⁠that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as ''inorganic chemistry''. Inorgan ...

with the formula OsBr₄. A black solid, this compound can be produced by heating

osmium tetrachloride Osmium(IV) chloride or osmium tetrachloride is the inorganic compound composed of osmium and chlorine with the empirical formula OsCl4. It exists in two polymorphs (crystalline forms). The compound is used to prepare other osmium complexes. Pre ...

and bromine under pressure.

Structure

As determined by

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to Diffraction, diffract in specific directions. By measuring th ...

, osmium tetrabromide is an inorganic polymer. It is isomorphous with

platinum tetrabromide Platinum(IV) bromide is the inorganic compound with the formula PtBr4. It is a brown solid. It is a little-used compound mainly of interest for academic research. It is a component of a reagent used in qualitative inorganic analysis Classical qu ...

and technetium tetrachloride. As such, osmium is in

octahedral In geometry, an octahedron (: octahedra or octahedrons) is any polyhedron with eight faces. One special case is the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each vertex. Many types of i ...

coordination. Each osmium center bonds to four doubly bridging bromide ligands and two mutually cis terminal bromide ligands.

Related compounds

OsBr₃ is the only other binary osmium bromide is that has been crystallized.

References

{{Bromides Bromides Platinum group halides Osmium compounds