Vanadium(II) oxide 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 idealized formula VO. It is one of the several binary

vanadium oxide Vanadium oxide mainly refers to: * Vanadium(II) oxide (vanadium monoxide), VO * Vanadium(III) oxide (vanadium sesquioxide ''or'' trioxide), V2O3 * Vanadium(IV) oxide (vanadium dioxide), VO2 * Vanadium(V) oxide (vanadium pentoxide), V2O5 Various o ...

s. It adopts a distorted

NaCl structure Sodium chloride , commonly known as edible salt, is an ionic compound with the chemical formula NaCl, representing a 1:1 ratio of sodium and chloride ions. It is transparent or translucent, brittle, hygroscopic, and occurs as the mineral hali ...

and contains weak V−V metal to metal bonds. VO is a

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

owing to delocalisation of electrons in the t_2g orbitals. VO is a

non-stoichiometric compound Non-stoichiometric compounds are chemical compounds, almost always solid inorganic compounds, having elemental composition whose proportions cannot be represented by a ratio of small natural numbers (i.e. an empirical formula); most often, in s ...

, its composition varying from VO_0.8 to VO_1.3. Diatomic VO is one of the molecules found in the spectrum of relatively cool M-type stars. A potential use of vanadium(II) monoxide is as a molecular vapor in

synthetic chemical Chemical synthesis (chemical combination) is the artificial execution of chemical reactions to obtain one or several products. This occurs by physical and chemical manipulations usually involving one or more reactions. In modern laboratory uses ...

reagent In chemistry, a reagent ( ) or analytical reagent is a substance or compound added to a system to cause a chemical reaction, or test if one occurs. The terms ''reactant'' and ''reagent'' are often used interchangeably, but reactant specifies a ...

s in low-temperature matrices.

References

Vanadium(II) compounds Non-stoichiometric compounds Transition metal oxides Rock salt crystal structure {{inorganic-compound-stub