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A covalent bond is a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electrons to form electron pairs between atoms. These electron pairs are known as shared pairs or bonding pairs . The stable balance of attractive and repulsive forces between atoms, when they share electrons , is known as covalent bonding. [ 1 ]
He estimated that a difference of 1.7 corresponds to 50% ionic character, so that a greater difference corresponds to a bond which is predominantly ionic. [3] As a quantum-mechanical description, Pauling proposed that the wave function for a polar molecule AB is a linear combination of wave functions for covalent and ionic molecules: ψ = aψ(A ...
In chemistry, a formula unit is the smallest unit of a non-molecular substance, such as an ionic compound, covalent network solid, or metal. [1] [2] It can also refer to the chemical formula for that unit. Those structures do not consist of discrete molecules, and so for them, the term formula unit is used.
There is no precise value that distinguishes ionic from covalent bonding, but an electronegativity difference of over 1.7 is likely to be ionic while a difference of less than 1.7 is likely to be covalent. [21] Ionic bonding leads to separate positive and negative ions. Ionic charges are commonly between −3e to +3e.
Molecules, by definition, are most often held together with covalent bonds involving single, double, and/or triple bonds, where a "bond" is a shared pair of electrons (the other method of bonding between atoms is called ionic bonding and involves a positive cation and a negative anion).
Ionic compounds can also be produced from their constituent ions by evaporation of their solvent, precipitation, freezing, a solid-state reaction, or the electron transfer reaction of reactive metals with reactive non-metals, such as halogen gases. Ionic compounds typically have high melting and boiling points, and are hard and brittle.
As noted above, covalent and ionic bonds form a continuum between shared and transferred electrons; covalent and weak bonds form a continuum between shared and unshared electrons. In addition, molecules can be polar, or have polar groups, and the resulting regions of positive and negative charge can interact to produce electrostatic bonding ...
The circumstances under which a compound will have ionic or covalent character can typically be understood using Fajans' rules, which use only charges and the sizes of each ion. According to these rules, compounds with the most ionic character will have large positive ions with a low charge, bonded to a small negative ion with a high charge. [25]