Period 2 molecules chlorides

Thus, as AEN becomes smaller, the bond becomes more covalent, and the macroscopic properties of the Period 3 chlorides and CI2 change from those of a solid consisting of ions to those of a gas consisting of individual molecules. 

In this section we discuss the bonding of the fluorides, chlorides, and hydrides of the elements of periods 3 and beyond with LLP coordination numbers up to four with particular emphasis on the elements of period 3. As might be expected these molecules show many similarities to the corresponding period 2 molecules, and the differences can be mainly attributed to the larger size and lower electronegativity of the atoms of a period 3 element compared to the corresponding period 2 element. 

Here we see clearly the large concentration of density around the oxygen nucleus, and the very small concentration around each hydrogen nucleus. The outer contour is an arbitrary choice because the density of a hypothetical isolated molecule extends to infinity. However, it has been found that the O.OOlau contour corresponds rather well to the size of the molecule in the gas phase, as measured by its van der Waal s radius, and the corresponding isodensity surface in three dimensions usually encloses more than 98% of the total electron population of the molecule (Bader, 1990). Thus this outer contour shows the shape of the molecule in the chosen plane. In a condensed phase the effective size of a molecule is a little smaller. Contour maps of some period 2 and 3 chlorides are shown in Figure 8. We see that the electron densities of the atoms in the LiCl molecule are only very little distorted from the spherical shape of free ions consistent with the large ionic character of this molecule. In... 

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