Bromine in daguerreotypy. Potassium bromide and sodium bromide were used as anticonvulsants and sedatives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were gradually superseded by chloral hydrate and then by the barbiturates. In the early years of the First World War, bromine compounds such as xylyl bromide were used as poison gas. Bromine is the third halogen, being a nonmetal in group 17 of the periodic table. Its properties are thus similar to those of fluorine, chlorine, and iodine, and tend to be intermediate between those of the two neighbouring halogens, chlorine and iodine. Bromine has the electron configuration
Compounds of fluorine state is −1. It differs from this value in elemental fluorine, where the atoms are bonded to each other and thus at oxidation state 0, and a few polyatomic ions: the very unstable anions and with intermediate oxidation states exist at very low temperatures, decomposing at around 40 K. Also, the cation and a few related species have been predicted to be stable. Fluorine forms compounds with all elements except neon and helium. In particular, it forms binary compounds, named fluorides, with all said elements except argon. All of the elements up to einsteinium, element 99, have been checked except