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This often causes ionic compounds to be very stable. 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.
A solid with extensive hydrogen bonding will be considered a molecular solid, yet strong hydrogen bonds can have a significant degree of covalent character. 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.
Ionic bonds are strong (and thus ionic substances require high temperatures to melt) but also brittle, since the forces between ions are short-range and do not easily bridge cracks and fractures. This type of bond gives rise to the physical characteristics of crystals of classic mineral salts, such as table salt.
The "size" of the charge in an ionic bond depends on the number of electrons transferred. An aluminum atom, for example, with a +3 charge has a relatively large positive charge. That positive charge then exerts an attractive force on the electron cloud of the other ion, which has accepted the electrons from the aluminum (or other) positive ion.
The anions in compounds with bonds with the most ionic character tend to be colorless (with an absorption band in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum). [81] In compounds with less ionic character, their color deepens through yellow, orange, red, and black (as the absorption band shifts to longer wavelengths into the visible spectrum). [81]
For ionic compounds made of molecular cations and/or anions, there may also be ion-dipole and dipole-dipole interactions if either molecule has a molecular dipole moment. The theoretical treatments described below are focused on compounds made of atomic cations and anions, and neglect contributions to the internal energy of the lattice from ...
The resulting compound is called an ionic compound, and is said to be held together by ionic bonding. In ionic compounds there arise characteristic distances between ion neighbours from which the spatial extension and the ionic radius of individual ions may be derived. The most common type of ionic bonding is seen in compounds of metals and ...
Most of the solute does not dissociate in a weak electrolyte, whereas in a strong electrolyte a higher ratio of solute dissociates to form free ions. A weak electrolyte is a substance whose solute exists in solution mostly in the form of molecules (which are said to be "undissociated"), with only a small fraction in the form of ions.