inorganic chemistry

Branch of chemistry dealing with the chemical properties of the elements and their compounds, excluding the more complex covalent compounds of carbon, which are considered in organic chemistry.

The origins of inorganic chemistry lay in observing the characteristics and experimenting with the uses of the substances (compounds and elements) that could be extracted from mineral ores. These could be classified according to their chemical properties: elements could be classified as metals or non-metals; compounds as acids or bases, oxidizing or reducing agents, ionic compounds (such as salts), or covalent compounds (such as gases). The arrangement of elements into groups possessing similar properties led to Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements, which prompted chemists to predict the properties of undiscovered elements that might occupy gaps in the table. This, in turn, led to the discovery of new elements, including a number of highly radioactive elements that do not occur naturally.

Modern inorganic chemistry has branched out to interact with a number of other disciplines, creating new interdisciplinary research fields such as metal organic chemistry, which plays an important role in the development of new catalysts for industrial processes, and bio-inorganic chemistry, which has been crucial for the understanding of complex metallo-enzymes such as nitrogenase.