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Thus, the term "ionic bonding" is given when the ionic character is greater than the covalent character – that is, a bond in which there is a large difference in electronegativity between the two atoms, causing the bonding to be more polar (ionic) than in covalent bonding where electrons are shared more equally.
Electrostatic potential map of a water molecule, where the oxygen atom has a more negative charge (red) than the positive (blue) hydrogen atoms. Electronegativity, symbolized as χ, is the tendency for an atom of a given chemical element to attract shared electrons (or electron density) when forming a chemical bond. [1]
Not all atoms attract electrons with the same force. The amount of "pull" an atom exerts on its electrons is called its electronegativity.Atoms with high electronegativities – such as fluorine, oxygen, and nitrogen – exert a greater pull on electrons than atoms with lower electronegativities such as alkali metals and alkaline earth metals.
The bond results because the metal atoms become somewhat positively charged due to loss of their electrons while the electrons remain attracted to many atoms, without being part of any given atom. Metallic bonding may be seen as an extreme example of delocalization of electrons over a large system of covalent bonds, in which every atom ...
Electrons, due to their smaller mass and thus larger space-filling properties as matter waves, determine the size of atoms and molecules that possess any electrons at all. Thus, anions (negatively charged ions) are larger than the parent molecule or atom, as the excess electron(s) repel each other and add to the physical size of the ion ...
In chemistry, the oxidation state, or oxidation number, is the hypothetical charge of an atom if all of its bonds to other atoms were fully ionic. It describes the degree of oxidation (loss of electrons) of an atom in a chemical compound. Conceptually, the oxidation state may be positive, negative or zero.
A chemical formula is a way of expressing information about the proportions of atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound, using chemical symbols for the chemical elements, and subscripts to indicate the number of atoms involved. For example, water is composed of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom: the chemical formula is H 2 O.
Electrons in an ionic bond tend to be mostly found around one of the two constituent atoms due to the large electronegativity difference between the two atoms, generally more than 1.9, (greater difference in electronegativity results in a stronger bond); this is often described as one atom giving electrons to the other. [5]