Group 14 hydride

Unlike other light hydrides such as ammonia, water and hydrogen fluoride, methane does not exhibit any anomalous effects attributed to hydrogen bonding, and so its properties conform well to the prevailing trend of heavier group 14 hydrides.

Carbon forms a huge variety of hydrocarbons (among the simplest alkanes are methane CH4, ethane C2H6, propane C3H8, butane C4H10, pentane C5H12 and hexane C6H14, with a wide range of uses.

Stannane SnH4, a strong reducing agent slowly decomposes at room temperature to tin and hydrogen gas, and is decomposed by concentrated aqueous acids or alkalis; distannane, Sn2H6 is still more unstable, and longer hydrostannums (hydrotins) are unknown.

Plumbane PbH4 is very poorly characterised and is only known in trace amounts: even at low temperatures, synthesis methods that yield the other MH4 compounds fail to give PbH4.

[1] However, some substituted diplumbanes, with a general chemical formula R3Pb−PbR3 are more stable, where the R groups are organyl.

Compounds containing hydrogen and multiple group 14 elements are known, one of the most famous of these being tetraethyllead Pb(CH2CH3)4 which contains carbon and lead.