Silver halide Silver halide A silver halide (or silver salt) is one of the chemical compounds that can form between the element silver and one of the halogens. In particular, bromine, chlorine, iodine and fluorine may each combine with silver to produce silver bromide (AgBr), silver chloride (AgCl), silver iodide (AgI), and three forms of silver fluoride, respectively. As a group, they are often referred to as the silver halides, and are often given the pseudo-chemical notation AgX. Although most silver halides involve silver atoms with oxidation states of +1 (Ag), silver halides in which the silver atoms have oxidation states of
Silver usually obtained by reacting silver or silver monofluoride with the strongest known oxidizing agent, krypton difluoride. Silver and gold have rather low chemical affinities for oxygen, lower than copper, and it is therefore expected that silver oxides are thermally quite unstable. Soluble silver(I) salts precipitate dark-brown silver(I) oxide, AgO, upon the addition of alkali. (The hydroxide AgOH exists only in solution; otherwise it spontaneously decomposes to the oxide.) Silver(I) oxide is very easily reduced to metallic silver, and decomposes to silver and oxygen above 160 °C. This and other silver(I) compounds may be oxidized by the strong oxidizing agent peroxodisulfate