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Covalent and ionic bonding form a continuum, with ionic character increasing with increasing difference in the electronegativity of the participating atoms. Covalent bonding corresponds to sharing of a pair of electrons between two atoms of essentially equal electronegativity (for example, C–C and C–H bonds in aliphatic hydrocarbons).
Although the bond in a compound like X+Y- may be considered to be 100% ionic, it will always have some degree of covalent character. When two oppositely charged ions (X+ and Y-) approach each other, the cation attracts electrons in the outermost shell of the anion but repels the positively charged nucleus.
In non-polar covalent bonds, the electronegativity difference between the bonded atoms is small, typically 0 to 0.3. Bonds within most organic compounds are described as covalent. The figure shows methane (CH 4), in which each hydrogen forms a covalent bond with the carbon.
The higher the associated electronegativity, the more an atom or a substituent group attracts electrons. Electronegativity serves as a simple way to quantitatively estimate the bond energy, and the sign and magnitude of a bond's chemical polarity, which characterizes a bond along the continuous scale from covalent to ionic bonding.
Ionic bonds have high bond energy. Bond energy is the mean amount of energy required to break the bond in the gaseous state. Most ionic compounds exist in the form of a crystal structure, in which the ions occupy the corners of the crystal. Such a structure is called a crystal lattice.
A nonmetal atom tends to attract additional valence electrons to attain a full valence shell; this can be achieved in one of two ways: An atom can either share electrons with a neighboring atom (a covalent bond), or it can remove electrons from another atom (an ionic bond). The most reactive kind of nonmetal element is a halogen (e.g., fluorine ...
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).
The classical model identifies three main types of chemical bonds — ionic, covalent, and metallic — distinguished by the degree of charge separation between participating atoms. [3] The characteristics of the bond formed can be predicted by the properties of constituent atoms, namely electronegativity.