Electron Affinity

[sarahwu3a]

What is the trend for electron affinity? Does it just go horizontally or is it diagonally like the other trends?

[Shannon Asay 1C]

Electron affinity is the energy released when an electron is added to a gas-phase atom. The general trend is that it increases as you go across a period and up a group.

[Cooper Baddley 1F]

It increases as you move left to right across the periodic table and up groups meaning elements such as Fluorine have very high electron affinity.

[KnarGeghamyan1B]

Electron affinity is also known as the likelihood of an atom gaining an electron. Therefore, it increases as you move to the right because the valence she’ll becomes closer to being full as the atom becomes more desperate to gain that last electron that will fill its shell. It increases as you move up too because the elements toward the bottom of the periodic table have valence electron shells that are farther from the nucleus, which means the attraction is weaker.

[Robert Tran 1B]

Electron affinity is not as periodic as ionization energy. Thus, although electron affinity tends to increase going right and up, there are many exceptions to this.

[Ying Yan 1F]

Electron affinity has a similar trend to ionization energy, where it increases up and to the right. Hope that helps!

[Eunice Nguyen 4I]

Electron affinity generally decreases down a group of elements because each atom is larger than the atom above it. With a larger distance between the negatively-charged electron and the positively-charged nucleus, the force of attraction is relatively weaker, which causes the electron affinity to decrease.
Moving from left to right across a period, atoms become smaller as the forces of attraction become stronger. This causes the electron to move closer to the nucleus, which increases the electron affinity from left to right across a period.

[Charysa Santos 4G]

Electron affinity increases rightwards across a row, and then decreases downward, down a group/column.

[EthanPham_1G]

Electron affinity is the energy released when an electron is added to a neutral atom in the gas phase. Electron affinity has the same trend as ionization energy. It increases left to right across a period and up a group.