COVALENT BONDING AND MOLECULAR SHAPE

INTRODUCTION

In this unit we will show a more detailed picture of how single, double and triple
covalent bonds are formed. We will also show how Schrödinger’s model explains the
geometry of molecules, that is, the orientation of the bonding electrons along specific
directions suggested by experimental data.

Before we study the covalent bond we should be able to answer the following question:
how can we decide whether a chemical bond is a covalent bond? The simple criterion
metal / non metal for ionic bonds and non metal / non metal for covalency, shows
insufficient to explain the properties of substances such as aluminium trichloride.
According to the usual criterion this is an ionic compound and consequently it should be
a high melting point, water soluble and solvent insoluble solid. In addition, both molten
aluminium trichloride and its aqueous solution should be very good conductors of
electricity. But despite forming aqueous solutions with very good electric
conductivity, aluminium trichloride dissolves in benzene and other organic
solvents, sublimes, melts and is distilled at low temperatures (below 200ºC), and
the molten salt is a poor conductor. These properties show that aluminium chloride
cannot be classified as a typical covalent compound! Let us have a closer look to the
ionic-covalent issue.

ELECTRONEGATIVITY

Electronegativity is a measure of the tendency of an atom to attract a bonding pair

of electrons.
The Pauling scale is the most commonly used. Fluorine (the most electronegative
element) is assigned a value of 4.0, and values range down to caesium and francium
which are the least electronegative at 0.7.

Non polar bonds

Consider a bond between two atoms, A and B. Each atom may be forming other bonds
as well as the one shown - but these are irrelevant to the argument.

If the atoms are equally electronegative, both have the same tendency to attract the
bonding pair of electrons, and so it will be found on average half way between the two
atoms. To get a bond like this, A and B would usually have to be the same atom
(homopolar or homonuclear bonds). You will find this sort of bond in, for example, H2
or Cl2 molecules.
These could be thought of as being a "pure" covalent bond - where the electrons are
shared evenly between the two atoms.

Polar bonds
In case both atoms A and B are different the bond is called heteropolar or heteronuclear.
Suppose B is slightly more electronegative than A. Then B will attract the electron pair
rather more than A does.

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That means that the B end of the bond has more than its fair share of electron density
and so becomes slightly negative. At the same time, the A end (rather short of electrons)
becomes slightly positive. In the diagram, "δ" (read as "delta") means "slightly" - so δ+
means "slightly positive". This is described as a polar bond. A polar bond is a covalent
bond in which there is a separation of charge between one end and the other - in other
words in which one end is slightly positive and the other slightly negative. Examples
include most covalent bonds. The hydrogen-chlorine bond in HCl or the hydrogen-
oxygen bonds in water are typical.

What happens if B is a lot more electronegative than A?

In this case, the electron pair is dragged right over to B's end of the bond. To all intents
and purposes, A has lost control of its electron, and B has complete control over both
electrons. Ions have been formed.

The implication of all this is that there is no clear-cut division between covalent
and ionic bonds. In a pure covalent bond, the electrons are held on average exactly half
way between the atoms. In a polar bond, the electrons have been dragged slightly
towards one end.
How far does this dragging have to go before the bond counts as ionic? There is no real
answer to that. You normally think of sodium chloride as being a typically ionic solid,
but even here the sodium hasn't completely lost control of its electron. Because of the
properties of sodium chloride, however, we tend to count it as if it were purely ionic.
Lithium iodide, on the other hand, would be described as being "ionic with some
covalent character". In this case, the pair of electrons hasn't moved entirely over to the
iodine end of the bond. Lithium iodide, for example, dissolves in organic solvents like
ethanol - not something which ionic substances normally do.

Polar bonds and polar molecules

In a simple molecule like HCl, if the bond is polar, so also is the
whole molecule. What about more complicated molecules?
In CCl4, each bond is polar.
The molecule as a whole, however, isn't polar - in the sense that it
doesn't have an end (or a side) which is slightly negative and one
which is slightly positive. The whole of the outside of the molecule
is somewhat negative, but there is no overall separation of charge
from top to bottom or from left to right.
By contrast, CHCl3 is polar. The hydrogen at the top of the
molecule is less electronegative than carbon and so is slightly
positive. This means that the molecule now has a slightly positive
"top" and a slightly negative "bottom", and so is overall a polar
molecule.

Patterns of electronegativity in the Periodic Table

The most electronegative element is fluorine and next

comes oxygen. If you remember that fact, everything
becomes easy, because electronegativity must always
increase towards fluorine in the Periodic Table.

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As you go across a period the electronegativity increases. The chart shows
electronegativities from sodium to chlorine - you have to ignore argon. It doesn't have
any electronegativity, because it doesn't form bonds. As you go down a group,
electronegativity decreases. The chart shows the patterns of electronegativity in Groups
1 and 7.

Explaining the patterns in electronegativity

The factors affecting ionisation energies and electron affinities also govern the trends in
electronegativity. The attraction that a bonding pair of electrons feels for a particular
nucleus depends on:

• the number of protons in the nucleus;

• the distance from the nucleus
• the amount of screening by inner electrons.

ELECTRONEGATIVITY OF THE ELEMENTS

H
2.1
Li Be B C N O F
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0
Na Mg Al Si P S Cl
0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.1 2.5 3.0
K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br
0.8 1.0 1.3 1.5 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.8 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.6 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.4 2.8
Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I
0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 1.9 2.2 2.2 2.2 1.9 1.7 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.1 2.5
Cs Ba La-Lu Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At
0.7 0.9 1.0-1.2 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.2 2.2 2.2 2.4 1.9 1.8 1.9 1.9 2.0 2.2
Fr Ra Ac Th Pa U Np-No
0.7 0.9 1.1 1.3 1.4 1.4 1.4-1.3

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It is taken as “rule of thumb” that bonds between atoms that have electronegativity
differences around 1.7 will show a 50 % of ionic character. If electronegativity
differences are small then bonds will be either covalent (non-metals) or metallic
(metals). We will consider a bond to be ionic if Δ electr. ≥ 2.0 (2/3 ionic). According
to this aluminium chloride should be quite covalent although it is a metal / non-metal
bond. In fact aluminium chloride can be easily distilled as any covalent substance and
shows solubility in non aqueous solvents! The following chart and the graph show how
ionic character relates to electronegativity difference.

Δelectroneg. 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1 2.3 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1
% ionic
0.5 2 6 12 19 26 34 43 51 59 67 74 79 84 88 91
character

SHAPES OF MOLECULES AND IONS

The electron pair repulsion theory

The shape of a molecule or ion is governed by the arrangement of the outer shell’s
electron pairs around the central atom. All you need to do is to work out how many
electron pairs there are at the bonding level, and then arrange them to produce the
minimum amount of repulsion between them. You have to include both bonding pairs
and lone pairs.

How to work out the number of electron pairs

You can do this by drawing dots-and-crosses pictures.

 First you need to work out how many groups there are bonded around the central
atom.

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  Now work out how many lone (non bonding) pairs of electrons there are. These
pairs will count as a group. If there are multiple bonds, the second or third
pairs of electrons forming the bond will not count
 Finally, work out the shape. Arrange the groups and lone electron pairs in space
to minimise repulsions. How this is done will become clear in the examples
which follow.
 Lone pairs being more “free to move” occupy more space and will push other
groups backwards so that the angle between them and other groups is slightly
wider.

FOUR ELECTRON PAIRS AROUND THE CENTRAL ATOM

There are lots of examples of this. The simplest is methane, CH4.

Carbon is in group 4, and so has 4 outer electrons. It is forming 4
bonds to hydrogens, adding another 4 electrons - 8 altogether, in 4
pairs. Because it is forming 4 bonds, these must all be bonding pairs. Four electron pairs
arrange themselves in space in what is called a tetrahedral arrangement. A tetrahedron
is a regular triangularly-based pyramid. The carbon atom would be at the centre and the
hydrogen atoms at the four corners. All the bond angles are 109.5°.

Other examples with four electron pairs around the central atom

Ammonia, NH3
Nitrogen is in group 5 and so has 5 outer electrons. Each of the 3
hydrogens is adding another electron to the nitrogen's outer level, making
a total of 8 electrons in 4 pairs. Because the nitrogen is only forming 3
bonds, one of the pairs must be a lone pair. The electron pairs arrange
themselves in a tetrahedral fashion as in methane.

In this case, an additional factor comes into play. Lone pairs are in orbitals that are
shorter and rounder than the orbitals that the bonding pairs occupy. Because of this,
there is more repulsion between a lone pair and a bonding pair than there is between
two bonding pairs.
Remember this:
Greatest repulsion lone pair - lone pair
lone pair - bond pair
Least repulsion bond pair - bond pair
Although the electron pair arrangement is tetrahedral, when you describe the shape, you
only take notice of the atoms. Ammonia is pyramidal - like a pyramid with the three
hydrogens at the base and the nitrogen at the top.

Water, H2O

Following the same logic as before, you will find that the oxygen has four
pairs of electrons, two of which are lone pairs. These will again take up a
tetrahedral arrangement. This time the bond angle closes slightly more to
104°, because of the repulsion of the two lone pairs.
The shape isn't described as tetrahedral, because we only "see" the oxygen
and the hydrogens - not the lone pairs. Water is described as bent or V-shaped.

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The ammonium ion, NH4+

The nitrogen has 5 outer electrons, plus another 4 from the four hydrogens - making a
total of 9.
But take care! This is a positive ion. It has a 1+ charge because it has lost 1 electron.
That leaves a total of 8 electrons in the outer level of the nitrogen. There are therefore 4
pairs, all of which are bonding because of the four hydrogens.
The ammonium ion has exactly the same shape as methane, because it has exactly the
same electronic arrangement. NH4+ is tetrahedral.

Methane and the ammonium ion are said to be isoelectronic. Two species
(atoms, molecules or ions) are isoelectronic if they have exactly the same
number and arrangement of electrons (including the distinction between
bonding pairs and lone pairs).

ELECTRONS IN AN ATOM MUST GET TO THE PROPER ORIENTATION

Some problems with the bonding in methane

What is wrong with the dots-and-crosses picture of bonding in
methane?
We are starting with methane because it is the simplest case which
illustrates the sort of processes involved. You will remember that the dots-
and-crossed picture of methane looks like this:
There is a serious mis-match between this structure, the actual shape of this
and other molecules as we have previously described, and the accepted
quantum chemistry’s electronic structure of carbon, 1s22s22px12py1. This shows that
there are only 2 unpaired electrons for hydrogens to share with, instead of the 4 which
the simple view requires.

You can see this more readily using the electrons-in-boxes notation.
Only the 2-level electrons are shown. The 1s2 electrons are too deep
inside the atom to be involved in bonding. The only electrons
directly available for sharing are the 2p electrons. Why then isn't
methane CH2?

Promotion of an electron

When bonds are formed, energy is released and the system becomes
more stable. If carbon forms 4 bonds rather than 2, twice as much
energy is released and so the resulting molecule becomes even more
stable.

There is only a small energy gap between the 2s and 2p orbitals, and
so it pays the carbon to provide a small amount of energy to
promote an electron from the 2s to the empty 2p to give 4 unpaired
electrons. The extra energy released when the bonds form more than
compensates for the initial input.

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Hybridisation
Now that we've got 4 unpaired electrons ready for bonding, another
problem arises. In methane all the carbon-hydrogen bonds are identical, but
our electrons are in two different kinds of orbitals. You aren't going to get
four identical bonds unless you start from four identical orbitals.

The electrons rearrange themselves again in a process called hybridisation. This

reorganises the electrons into four identical hybrid (mixed) orbitals called sp3 hybrids
(because they are made from one s orbital and three p orbitals). You should read "sp 3"
as "s p three" - not as "s p cubed".
The sp3 hybrid orbitals look a bit like half a p orbital, and they arrange
themselves in space so that they are as far apart as possible. You can
picture the nucleus as being at the centre of a tetrahedron (a triangularly
based pyramid) with the orbitals pointing to the corners. For clarity, the
nucleus is drawn far larger than it really is.

What happens when the bonds are formed?

Remember that hydrogen's electron is in a 1s orbital - a spherically symmetric region of

space surrounding the nucleus where there is some fixed chance (say 95%) of finding
the electron. When a covalent bond is formed, the atomic orbitals (the orbitals in
the individual atoms) merge to produce a new molecular orbital which contains the
electron pair which creates the bond.

Four molecular orbitals are formed, looking rather like the original sp3 hybrids, but with
a hydrogen nucleus embedded in each lobe. Each orbital holds the 2 electrons that we've
previously drawn as a dot and a cross.
The principles involved (promotion of electrons if necessary and hybridisation,
followed by the formation of molecular orbitals) can be applied to any covalently-bound
molecule.
What has been said about methane can be applied to water, ammonia and any
other molecules with four electron pairs in the valence shell of atoms. A very
closely related case that allows for further generalisation is the bonding in ethane.

Ethane C2H6

The formation of molecular orbitals in ethane

Ethane is a simple example of how a carbon-
carbon single bond is formed.

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Each carbon atom in the ethane promotes an electron and then forms sp3 hybrids exactly
as we've described in methane. So just before bonding, the atoms look like this:

The hydrogen atoms bond with the two carbons

to produce molecular orbitals just as they did
with methane. The two carbon atoms bond by
merging their remaining sp3 hybrid orbitals end-
to-end to make a new molecular orbital. The
bond formed by this end-to-end overlap is called
a sigma (σ) bond. In methane we find s-sp3 σ
bonds; in ethane we find sp3-sp3 σ bonds. The
bonds between the carbons and hydrogen atoms
are also s-sp3 σ bonds.
In any sigma bond, the most likely place to find the pair of electrons is on a line
between the two nuclei.
Free rotation about the carbon-carbon single bond
The two ends of this molecule can spin quite freely about the sigma bond so that there
are, in a sense, an infinite number of possibilities for the shape of an ethane molecule.
Some possible shapes are:

In each case, the left hand CH3 group has been kept in a constant position so that you
can see the effect of spinning the right hand one.

THE SHAPE OF MOLECULES WITH THREE GROUPS AROUND THE

CENTRAL ATOM

The simple cases of this would be BF3 or BCl3.

Boron is in group 3, so starts off with 3 electrons. It is forming 3 bonds, adding
another 3 electrons. There is no charge, so the total is 6 electrons - in 3 pairs.
Because it is forming 3 bonds there can be no lone pairs. The 3 pairs arrange
themselves as far apart as possible. They all lie in one plane at 120° to each
other. The arrangement is called trigonal planar.

In the diagram, the other electrons on the fluorine atoms have been left out because they
are irrelevant.
Methanal (CH2O), ethene (ethylene C2H4) and the nitrate anion (NO3-) belong to this
group. Next section explains how carbon copes with the spatial orientation of bonds in
ethene.

DOUBLE BONDS: A DIFFERENT WAY TO HYBRIDISE

The simple view of the bonding in ethene

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At a simple level, ethene is drawn showing two bonds between the carbon atoms. Each
line in this diagram represents one pair of shared electrons. Ethene is actually much
more interesting than this.

An orbital view of the bonding in ethene

Ethene is built from hydrogen atoms (1s1) and carbon atoms (1s22s22px12py1). The
carbon atom doesn't have enough unpaired electrons to form the required number of
bonds, so it needs to promote one of the 2s2 pair into the empty 2pz orbital. This is
exactly the same as happens whenever carbon forms bonds - whatever else it ends up
joined to.

Now there's a difference, because each carbon is only joining to

three other atoms rather than four - as in methane or ethane.
When the carbon atoms hybridise their outer orbitals before
forming bonds, this time they only hybridise three of the
orbitals rather than all four. They use the 2s electron and two of
the 2p electrons, but leave the other 2p electron unchanged. The
new orbitals formed are called sp2 hybrids, because they are made by an s orbital and
two p orbitals reorganising themselves. The sp2 orbitals look rather like sp3 orbitals that
you have already come across in the bonding in methane, except that they are shorter
and fatter. The three sp2 hybrid orbitals arrange themselves as far apart as possible -
which is at 120° to each other in a plane. The remaining p orbital is at right angles to
them. The two carbon atoms and four hydrogen atoms would look like this before they
joined together:

The various atomic orbitals which are pointing towards each other now merge to give
molecular orbitals, each containing a bonding pair of electrons. These are sigma bonds -
just like those formed by end-to-end overlap of atomic orbitals in,
say, ethane. The p orbitals on each carbon aren't pointing towards
each other, and so we'll leave those for a moment. In the diagram,
the black dots represent the nuclei of the atoms. Notice that the p
orbitals are so close that they are overlapping sideways.

This sideways overlap also creates a molecular orbital, but of a different kind. In this
one the electrons aren't held on the line between the two nuclei, but above and below the
plane of the molecule. A bond formed in this way is called a pi
bond. For clarity, the sigma bonds are shown using lines - each
line representing one pair of shared electrons. The various sorts of
line show the directions the bonds point in. An ordinary line
represents a bond in the plane of the screen (or the paper if you've
printed it); a broken line is a bond going back away from you, and
a wedge shows a bond coming out towards you. Be clear about what a pi bond is. It is a
region of space in which you can find the two electrons which make up the bond. Those

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two electrons can live anywhere within that space. It would be quite misleading to think
of one living in the top and the other in the bottom. The pi bond dominates the
chemistry of ethene. It is very vulnerable to attack - a very negative region of space
above and below the plane of the molecule. It is somewhat distant from the control of
the nuclei and so is a weaker bond than the sigma bond joining the two carbons.
All double bonds (whatever atoms they might be joining) will consist of a sigma bond
and a pi bond.

THE SHAPE OF MOLECULES WITH TWO GROUPS AROUND THE

CENTRAL ATOM

Two groups around the central atom

The simplest case is beryllium chloride, BeCl2. The electronegativity difference

between beryllium and chlorine isn't enough to allow the formation of ions.
Beryllium has 2 outer electrons because it is in group 2. It forms bonds to two chlorines,
each of which adds another electron to the outer level of the beryllium. There is no ionic
charge to worry about, so there are 4 electrons altogether - 2 pairs.
It is forming 2 bonds so there are no lone pairs. The two bonding
pairs arrange themselves at 180° to each other, because that's as far
apart as they can get. The molecule is described as being linear.

HCN (hydrogen cyanide) and ethyne (acetylene, C2H2) belong to this group

TRIPLE BONDS: A FURTHER CASE OF HYBRIDISATION

A share of three pairs of electrons will form a triple bond. A triple bond appears in the
nitrogen molecule, the hydrogen cyanide molecule and acetylene among other simple
molecules. There are no new issues in triple bond formation: a 2s electron
is promoted to a 2p sublevel and hybridization mixes in this case just one
p orbital and the s orbital forming a so called sp hybrid. The sp hybrid
orbitals are in turn fatter and shorter than sp2 hybrids (they show more “s
character” so they look more “rounded”). The remaining two 2p orbitals lie
along the y and z axes.

In the nitrogen molecule both atoms approach and their sp orbitals overlap (frontally)
forming an sp-sp σ bond. The other two sp orbitals are occupied by unshared electron
pairs. The p orbitals overlap laterally to form two mutually perpendicular π bonds. The
resulting set is a compact molecule

The two N atoms The N2 molecule

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Both C atoms in ethyne or acetylene (C2H2) are bonded the same way. The sp orbitals
occupied by the electron pairs in the case of nitrogen, are now sp-s σ orbitals bonding
both C atoms to the H atoms on the molecule.

Just a word about some

complicated cases

There are cases in which five or six covalent bonds are formed around an atom. This is
the case of PCl5: there are 10 electrons around the P atom so it shows a case where the
rule of eight doesn’t hold! This will not be the case for the molecules we will find in
this course but it shows what happens when d orbitals play a role in bonding. In this
case promotion of an s electron to a d level occurs.

COVALENT MACROSTRUCTURES

Sometimes atoms bond covalently but not to form relatively small particles (the
molecules) but into a repetitive pattern that extends for millions or maybe billions of
atoms forming gigantic covalent structures many times called macromolecules (though
the word molecule meaning a “small particle” has lost its original meaning!). we will
call them covalent macrostructures to avoid any confusion. Diamond graphite and
quartz belong to this group of substances.

The structure of diamond

Carbon has an electronic arrangement of 2,4. In diamond, each carbon shares electrons
with four other carbon atoms - forming four single bonds.
In the diagram some carbon atoms only seem to be forming
two bonds (or even one bond), but that's not really the case.
We are only showing a small bit of the whole structure. This
is a giant covalent structure - it continues on and on in three
dimensions. It is not a molecule, because the number of atoms
joined up in a real diamond is completely variable -
depending on the size of the crystal.

The structure of graphite

Graphite has a layer structure which is quite difficult to draw convincingly in three
dimensions. The diagram below shows the arrangement of the atoms in each layer, and
the way the layers are spaced.

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Notice that you can't really draw the side view of the layers to the same scale as the
atoms in the layer without one or
other part of the diagram being
either very spread out or very
squashed.
In that case, it is important to give
some idea of the distances involved. The distance
between the layers is about 2.5 times the distance
between the atoms within each layer. The layers, of course, extend over huge numbers
of atoms - not just the few shown above.

Bonding in graphite

Each carbon atom uses three of its electrons to form simple bonds to its three close
neighbours. That leaves a fourth electron in the bonding level. These "spare" electrons
in each carbon atom become delocalised over the whole of the sheet of atoms in one
layer. They are no longer associated directly with any particular atom or pair of atoms,
but are free to wander throughout the whole sheet.
The important thing is that the delocalised electrons are free to move anywhere within
the sheet - each electron is no longer fixed to a particular carbon atom. There is,
however, no direct contact between the delocalised electrons in one sheet and those in
the neighbouring sheets.
The atoms within a sheet are held together by strong covalent bonds - stronger, in fact,
than in diamond because of the additional bonding caused by the delocalised electrons.
So what holds the sheets together?
In graphite you have the ultimate example of van der Waals dispersion forces (to be
explained later). As the delocalised electrons move around in the sheet, very large
temporary dipoles can be set up, which will induce opposite dipoles in the sheets above
and below - and so on throughout the whole graphite crystal.

The structure of silicon dioxide, SiO2 (quartz)

Crystalline silicon has the same structure as diamond. To turn it

into silicon dioxide, all you need to do is to modify the silicon
structure by including some oxygen atoms as shown in the figure

Notice that each silicon atom is bridged to its neighbours by an

oxygen atom. Don't forget that this is just a tiny part of a giant
structure extending on all 3 dimensions

PROBLEMS

1- According to the VEPRET theory predict the geometry of the following

molecules or ions and compare them:
H2O NH3 BF3 SO4- - SO2 SO3 SO3- - NO3-

2- Explain the different shapes for ammonia and boron trifluoride.

3- State the hybridisation of C atoms in the following molecules:

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 CO2 C2H2 C2H4 C2H6 HCN H2CO

4- Tell how many σ (sigma) and how many π (pi) bonds are there formed in each
of the molecules of problem Nr 3.

5- Suggest the hybridisation of Carbon in diamond and in graphite. Explain your

suggestion.

6- What could be the hybridisation of Silicon and of Oxygen in quartz? Explain.

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