Electronegativity

Electronegativity

Since the noble gases have a complete octet and essentially no tendency to attract a shared pair of electrons, electronegativity is not normally defined for most of them — a value is only meaningful for elements that actually form covalent bonds.

• For a long time noble gases were treated as having effectively zero or undefined electronegativity, consistent with their inertness.
• After xenon was shown to form compounds with the most electronegative elements (fluorine and oxygen), a Pauling electronegativity of about 2.6 for xenon could be assigned from its Xe–F bonds. …