Why do atoms form bonds?

Sodium and chlorine are both The result is a white solid that has
elements. When sodium is heated to be scraped from the sides of the
and placed in a jar of chlorine, it jar. It looks completely different
burns with a bright flame from the sodium and chlorine
Why do atoms form bonds?

 So a chemical reaction has taken place. The white solid is sodium chloride.
 Atoms of sodium and chlorine have BONDED (joined together) to form a compound.
Why do atoms form bonds?

 Like sodium and chlorine, the atoms of most elements form bonds.
 Why? We get a clue by looking at the elements of Group 0, the noble
 gases. Their atoms do not form bonds.
 This is because the atoms have a very stable arrangement of electrons in the outer shell.
This makes the noble gases unreactive
 Why do atoms form bonds?

 helium atom:
neon atom:
 full outer shell of 2 argon atom:
full outer shell of 8
 electrons – stable outer shell of 8
electrons – stable
electrons – stable
Why do atoms form bonds?

 And that gives us the answer to our question:

 Atoms bond with each other in order to gain a stable arrangement of outer-shell
electrons, like the atoms of Group 0.
 In other words, they bond in order to gain 8 electrons in their outer
shell (or 2, if they have only one shell).
How sodium atoms gain a stable outer shell

 A sodium atom has just 1 electron in its outer shell. To obtain a stable
outer shell of 8 electrons, it loses this electron to another atom. It becomes a sodium ion:
How sodium atoms gain a stable outer shell

 The sodium ion has 11 protons but only 10 electrons, so it has a charge of 11. The symbol
for sodium is Na, so the symbol for the sodium ion is The 1 means is a positive ion.
How chlorine atoms gain a stable outer shell

 A chlorine atom has 7 electrons in its outer shell. It can reach 8 electrons by accepting 1
electron from another atom. It becomes a chloride ion:
How chlorine atoms gain a stable outer shell

 The chloride ion has a charge of 1-, so it is a negative ion. Its symbol is Cl -.
Ions

 An atom becomes an ion when it loses or gains electrons.

 An ion is a charged particle.

 It is charged because it has an unequal

number of protons and electrons.
THE IONIC BOND

 A metal reacts with a non-metal to form an ionic compound.

 The metal atoms lose electrons. The non-metal atoms gain them.
 The ions form a lattice. The compound has no overall charge
THE IONIC BOND

 How sodium and chlorine atoms bond together

A Sodium atom must lose one electron, and a
chlorine atom must gain one, to obtain stable outer shells of 8 electrons.
 So when a sodium atom and a chlorine atom react together, the sodium atom loses its
electron to the chlorine atom, and two ions are formed.
 Here, sodium electrons are shown as and chlorine electrons as
 How sodium and chlorine atoms bond together

The two ions have opposite charges, so they attract each

other. The force
of attraction between them is strong. It is called an ionic
bond.
The ionic bond is the bond that forms between ions of
opposite charge
How solid sodium chloride is formed

 When sodium reacts with chlorine, billions of sodium and chloride ions
form. But they do not stay in pairs. They form a regular pattern or lattice
of alternating positive and negative ions, as shown below.
The ions are held together by strong ionic bonds
Other ionic compounds

 Magnesium oxide
 A magnesium atom has 2 outer electrons and an oxygen atom has 6. When magnesium
burns in oxygen, each magnesium atom loses its 2 outer electrons to an oxygen atom.

 Magnesium and oxide ions are formed:

 Magnesium oxide

The ions attract each other because of their opposite charges. Like the
sodium and chloride ions, they group to form a lattice.
The resulting compound is called magnesium oxide. It has one magnesium
ion for each oxide ion, so its formula is MgO. It has no overall charge
Magnesium chloride

 When magnesium burns in chlorine, each magnesium atom reacts with two chlorine atoms,
to form magnesium chloride. Each ion has 8 outer electrons:
The properties of ionic compounds

1. Ionic compounds have high melting and boiling points.

The properties of ionic compounds

 2. Ionic compounds are usually soluble in water

 The water molecules are able to separate the ions from each other.
 The ions then move apart, surrounded by water molecules.
 3. Ionic compounds conduct electricity, when melted or dissolved in
 water.
 A solid ionic compound will not conduct electricity. But when it melts,
 or dissolves in water, the ions become free to move. Since they are
 charged, they can then conduct electricity

 POLAR
QUESTIONS
The covalent bond

 atoms bond in order to gain a stable outer shell of electrons, like the noble gas atoms. So
when sodium and chlorine react together, each sodium atom gives up an electron to a
chlorine atom.
 But that is not the only way. Atoms can also gain stable outer shells by sharing electrons
with each other.
Sharing electrons

 When two non-metal atoms react together, both need to gain electrons to achieve stable
outer shells. They manage this by sharing electrons.
 We will look at non-metal elements in this unit, and at non-metal
compounds in the next unit. Atoms can share only their outer (valence)
 electrons, so the diagrams will show only these
The bond between the atoms

 Hydrogen Molecule
 A hydrogen atom has only one shell, with one electron. The shell can hold two electrons.
When two hydrogen atoms get close enough, their shells overlap and then they can share
electrons. Like this

So each has gained a full shell of two

electrons, like helium atoms.
 Chlorine

 A chlorine atom needs a share in one more electron, to obtain a stable outer shell of eight
electrons. So two chlorine atoms bond covalently like this:

Since only one pair of electrons is shared, the bond between the atoms is
called a single covalent bond, or just a single bond. You can show it in a
short way by a single line, like this: Cl-Cl.
Oxygen
Nitrogen
Covalent compounds

 In the last unit you saw that many non-metal elements exist as
molecules.
 A huge number of compounds also exist as molecules.
 In a molecular compound, atoms of different elements share
electrons.
 The compounds are called covalent compounds. Here are
three examples
COVALENT COMPOUNDS
COVALENT COMPOUNDS
COVALENT COMPOUNDS
COVALENT COMPOUNDS
The properties of covalent compounds
Giant covalent structures
Occurrence of carbon

 Carbon occurs in both free states and combined states. In

combined states, it occurs as coal, mineral oils,
carbonates (e.g. lime stone, marble and sea shells) and
all living things (animals and plants). As an element it
occurs in both natural (as diamond and graphite) and
synthetic forms (as coke, charcoal and carbon fiber
 Diamond – a giant covalent structure

A carbon atom forms covalent

bonds to four others, as shown
above. Each outer atom then
bonds to three more, and so on.
Eventually billions of carbon
atoms are bonded together, in a
giant covalent structure. This
shows just a very tiny part of it.
Diamond – a giant covalent structure

 In diamond, the structure consists of infinite number of

carbon atoms. Each of the carbon atoms is joined to four
other carbon atoms by covalent bonds resulting into a
tetrahedral arrangement. This gives a diamond crystal a
giant three dimensional structure. Diamond has no mobile
electrons so cannot conduct electricity.
 Diamond has these properties:
 1 It is very hard, because each atom is held in place by four strong
covalent bonds. In fact it is the hardest substance on Earth.
 2 For the same reason it has a very high melting point, 3550 0C.
 3 It can’t conduct electricity because there are no ions or free
electrons to carry the charge.
 Uses of diamond

Diamond is very hard and used as drilling devices,

rock borers and glass cutters.
2. Diamond is used jewellery because its sparkling
appearance.
Silica is similar to diamond

 Silica, SiO2, occurs naturally as quartz, the main mineral in sand.

 Like diamond, it forms a giant covalent structure, as shown on the right.
 Each silicon atom bonds covalently to four oxygen atoms. And each
 oxygen atom bonds covalently to two silicon atoms. The result is a very
 hard substance with a melting point of 1710 8C.
Graphite

 Like diamond, graphite is made only of carbon atoms. So diamond and

 graphite are allotropes of carbon – two forms of the same element.
 Diamond is the hardest solid on Earth. But graphite is one of the softest!
 This difference is a result of their very different structures
STRUCTURE OF GRAPHITE

 Graphite consists of infinite number of carbon atoms each

covalently bonded to three other carbon atoms forming hexagonal
rings that are arranged in layers. Each layer is a giant two
dimensional structure. The different layers are held by weak Vander
Waal‘s forces of attraction, making them to slide over each other
thus they are slippery and soft. Some electrons in a layer are mobile
making them to conduct electricity.
Graphite has these properties:

 1 Unlike diamond, it is soft and slippery. That is because the sheets can
 slide over each other easily.
 2 Unlike diamond, it is a good conductor of electricity. That is because each carbon atom
has four outer electrons, but forms only three bonds. So the fourth electron is free to move
through the graphite, carrying charge.
The bonding in metals
The table shows clearly that:

 molecular substances have low melting points. That is because the

forces between molecules in the lattice are weak.
 giant structures such as sodium chloride and diamond have much
higher melting points. That is because the bonds between ions or atoms within giant
structures are very strong.
 Now look at the metals. They too have high melting points – much higher
than for carbon dioxide or water. This gives us a clue that they too might be giant structures.
The structure of metals

 In metals, the atoms are packed tightly together in a regular lattice.

 The tight packing allows outer electrons to separate from their atoms.
 The result is a lattice of ions in a ‘sea’ of electrons that are free to move

The copper ions are held together

by their attraction to the free
electrons between them.
The strong forces of attraction
are called metallic bonds.
 Metals form giant structures in which electrons in the outer shells of the metal atoms are
free to move. The metallic bond is the force of attraction between these free-moving
(delocalised) electrons and positive metal ions. Metallic bonds are strong, so metals can
maintain a regular structure and usually have high melting and boiling points.
The metallic bond is the attraction between metal ions and free
electrons.

 It is the same with all metals. The ions sit in a lattice, held
together by
their strong attraction to the free electrons. And because the
ions are in a regular pattern, metals are crystalline.
Explaining some key properties of metals

 Metals usually have high melting points.

 That is because it takes a lot of heat energy to break up the lattice, with
its strong metallic bonds. Copper melts at 1083 8C, and nickel at 1455 8C.
(But there are exceptions. Sodium melts at only 98 8C, for example. And
mercury melts at –39 8C, so it is a liquid at room temperature.)
Metals are malleable and ductile.

 Malleable means they can be bent and pressed into shape. Ductile
means they can be drawn out into wires. This is because the layers can
slide over each other. This diagram represents any metal lattice:
Metals are good conductors of heat.

 That is because the free electrons take in heat energy,

which makes them move faster. They quickly transfer the heat through the metal structure:
Metals are good conductors of electricity

 That is because the free electrons can move through the lattice carrying charge, when a
voltage is applied across the metal.
 Silver is the best conductor of all the metals.
 Copper is next – but it is used much more than silver because it is cheaper.