Hypothetical chemical compound heat of formation ... can be used to determine whether a hypothetical compound is stable." However, "a negative formation enthalpy does not automatically imply the existence of a hypothetical compound." The method predicts that NaCl is stable but NeCl is not. It predicted XePtF based on the stability of OPtF. Hypothetical chemical compound A hypothetical chemical compound is a chemical compound that has been conceived of, but is not known to have been synthesized, observed, or isolated (identified or shown to exist). Some hypothetical compounds cannot form at all. Others might turn out to be highly unstable, decomposing, isomerizing, polymerizing,
Chemical stability state B if the Gibbs energy of the change from A to B is positive. Thermodynamic stability applies to a particular system. The reactivity of a chemical substance is a description of how it might react across a variety of potential chemical systems and, for a given system, how fast such a reaction could proceed. Chemical substances or states can persist indefinitely even though they are not in their lowest energy state if they experience metastability - a state which is stable only if not disturbed too much. A substance (or state) might also be termed "kinetically persistent" if it