An Electron Diffraction Study of Hydrogen Peroxide and Hydrazine

We undertook the investigation of the hydrogen peroxide and hydrazine molecules in order to determine the lengths of the oxygen-oxygen and nitrogen-nitrogen covalent single bonds which they contain, and so directly to fix the values of the corresponding single-bond covalent radii which had previously been estimated only by indirect methods. Because of the relatively low scattering power of hydrogen atoms nothing could be learned about the other interatomic distances in hydrogen peroxide, and only rough values were found for hydrazine. We wanted also to study hydroxylamine, but its instability was even more troublesome than that of hydrogen peroxide and we gave up our efforts to photograph it after a few unsuccessful attempts.