group 13 to 17 (p-block) form covalent hydrides (or nonmetal hydrides). In group 12 zinc hydride is a common chemical reagent but cadmium hydride and mercury hydride are very unstable and esoteric. In group 13 boron hydrides exist as a highly reactive monomer BH3, as an adduct for example ammonia borane or as dimeric diborane and as a whole group of BH cluster compounds. Alane (AlH3) is a polymer. Gallium exists as the dimer digallane. Indium hydride is only stable below . Not much is known about the final group 13 hydride, thallium hydride. Due to the total number of possible binary saturated compounds with carbon of the type CnH2n+2 being very large, there are many group 14 hydrides. Going down the group the number of binary silicon compounds (silanes) is small (straight or branched but rarely cyclic) for example disilane and trisilane. For germanium only 5 linear chain binary compounds are known as gases or volatile liquids. Examples are n-pentagermane, isopentagermane and neopentagermane. Of tin only the distannane is known. Plumbane is an unstable gas. The hydrogen halides, hydrogen chalcogenides and pnictogen hydrides also form compounds with hydrogen, whose lightest members show many anomalous properties due to hydrogen bonding. Non-classical hydrides are those in which extra hydrogen molecules are coordinated as a ligand on the central atoms. These are very unstable but some have been shown to exist. Polyhydrides or superhydrides are compounds in which the number of hydrogen atoms exceed the valency of the combining atom. These may only be stable under extreme pressure, but may be high temperature superconductors, such as H3S, superconducting at up to 203 K. Polyhydrides are actively studied with the hope of discovering a room temperature superconductor. The periodic table of the stable binary hydrides The relative stability of binary hydrogen compounds and alloys at standard temperature and pressure can be inferred from their standard enthalpy of formation values. Molecular hydrides The isolation of monomeric molecular hydrides usually require extremely mild conditions, which are partial pressure and cryogenic temperature. The reason for this is threefold - firstly, most molecular hydrides are thermodynamically unstable toward decomposition into their elements; secondly, many molecular hydrides are also thermodynamically unstable toward polymerisation; and thirdly, most molecular hydrides are also kinetically unstable toward these types of reactions due to low activation energy barriers. Instability toward decomposition is generally attributable to poor contribution from the orbitals of the heavier