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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).
In inorganic chemistry, Fajans' rules, formulated by Kazimierz Fajans in 1923, [1] [2] [3] are used to predict whether a chemical bond will be covalent or ionic, and depend on the charge on the cation and the relative sizes of the cation and anion. They can be summarized in the following table:
Hydrogen was chosen as the reference, as it forms covalent bonds with a large variety of elements: its electronegativity was fixed first [3] at 2.1, later revised [8] to 2.20. It is also necessary to decide which of the two elements is the more electronegative (equivalent to choosing one of the two possible signs for the square root).
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]
Ionic bonding is a type of electrostatic interaction between atoms that have a large electronegativity difference. 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]
To form an ionic bond, a halogen atom can remove an electron from another atom in order to form an anion (e.g., F −, Cl −, etc.). To form a covalent bond, one electron from the halogen and one electron from another atom form a shared pair (e.g., in the molecule H–F, the line represents a shared pair of valence electrons, one from H and ...
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. Ionic compounds lose their crystal lattice structure and break up into ions when dissolved in water or any other polar solvent. This process is called solvation.
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.