Borates or phosphates? That is the question

Chemical nomenclature is perceived to be a closed topic. However, this work shows that the identification of polyanionic groups is still ambiguous and so is the nomenclature for some ternary compounds. Two examples, boron phosphate (BPO₄) and boron arsenate (BAsO₄), which were assigned to the large phosphate and arsenate families, respectively, nearly a century ago, are explored. The analyses show that these two compounds should be renamed phosphorus borate (PBO₄) and arsenic borate (AsBO₄). Beyond epistemology, this has pleasing consequences at several levels for the predictive character of chemistry. It paves the way for future work on the possible syntheses of SbBO₄ and BiBO₄, and it also renders previous structure field maps completely predictive, allowing us to foresee the structure and phase transitions of NbBO₄ and TaBO₄. Overall, this work demonstrates that quantum mechanics calculations can contribute to the improvement of current chemical nomenclature. Such revisitation is necessary to classify compounds and understand their properties, leading to the main final aim of a chemist: predicting new compounds, their structures and their transformations.