Acidic oxide

An acidic oxide is a type of oxide, a chemical compound made of oxygen and some other chemical element. Acidic oxides react with water to make acids or remove bases. Many acidic oxides are acid anhydrides of oxoacids.

Acidic oxides are Lewis acids: they form coordinate covalent bonds with lone pairs on Lewis bases.[1] They do not have hydrogen atoms, so they are not Arrhenius or Brønsted–Lowry acids.

Whether or not a compound is called an acidic oxide depends on its reactions with water, not other chemicals. Many acidic oxides act like bases in very acidic solutions. An important example is the activation of sulfur trioxide by sulfuric acid to make the cation HSO+3, a strong electrophile used in electrophilic aromatic sulfonation.[2]

Sources

  1. ↑ IUPAC, Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. (the "Gold Book") (2025). Online version: (2006–) "Lewis acid". doi:10.1351/goldbook.L03508
  2. ↑ John McMurry (2023-09-20). "16.2 Other Aromatic Substitutions". Organic Chemistry, a Tenth Edition. Houston, Texas: OpenStax.
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