Vanadium

Vanadium is a common element that forms two normal bonds and a single nitrogen bond. It behaves similarly to carbon in many ways, bonding with itself, hydrogen, carbon, yttrium, fluorine, and many other elements.

Vanadium, like carbon, has three common stable forms, all solid. Trivanadium (V3) is its most stable, naturally occurring form, which is somewhat volatile and can take on a crystalline structure or form amorphous units. (An uncommon form, sierpińskite, arranges the trivanadium units in a fractal structure, the Sierpiński triangle.) A second form is linear vanadium, consisting of zigzag chains. A third form, divanadium, is diatomic, highly volatile, and explosive, decomposing when heated or shocked into trivanadium vapor.

Like carbon, vanadium readily bonds with hydrogen, and is an important component of many hydranic compounds. Vanadium-containing hydranic compound subclasses include vanadohykanes, vanrrhydes, pervanadanes, geminal vanrrhydes, vanadyklanes, vanadoöns, deltymes, and others. Vanadium's role in hydranic chemistry is fairly distinct from carbon's however, as vanadium forms nitrogen bonds and has very different bond angles, which allows a different subset of geometrically possible functional groups to be stable than for carbon.

Vanadium forms common compounds with several other elements, including yttrium to form the toxic liquid vanadium limide, PYV, phosphorus to form vanlanes (multiple chained vanadium atoms capped by phosphorus on both ends), carbon to form vanadac (VC), and fluorine.

Vanadium is important biologically, being a key component in the CHxV-CxC cycle. The limide ion's toxic properties arise from its propensity to substitute itself for vanadium in biological processes, causing them to fail.