What occurs during an ionic bond?

Question

Chemistry

Answer 1

One atom loses an electron (becomes positively charged) and the other atom receives that electron (becomes negatively charged).

Answer 2

In ionic bonds electrons are incompletely shared between two elements; the electron or electrons spend much more time near one element than the other.  Ionic bonds occur when a relatively electronegative element comes in contact with a relatively un-elecronegative element; elecronegativity is defined as electron affinity or the ability to attract electrons.  Certain periodic tables will give a numerical value for the electronegativity of each element.  

Chlorine is a highly elecronegative halogen and sodium is an alkali metal with a low elecronegativity.  When a sodium atom and a chlorine atom come in contact sodium's single valence shell electron is more attracted to the chlorine than to the sodium nucleus.  This results in the formation of the sodium and chloride ions, sodium being Na+ or sodium minus one elecron and chloride being Cl- or chlorine plus one elecron.  Each electron carries a -1 charge.  Solid sodium chloride has a crystal structure, but when dissolved in water the two ions completely dissociate—they are strong elecrolytes—with the chloride holding on to the extra electron, maintaining it's -1 charge.

When two elements have very similar electronegativity values they form covalent bonds, where electrons are shared roughly evenly between the two elements.  Carbon can form four covalent bonds with elements like hydrogen, the resulting CH4 (methane) molecule has a relatively even distribution of elecrtrons throughout.  In so-called polar covalent bonds there is a significant electronegativity difference but not enough for one element to completely take the electron from the other.  Polar molecules carry a slight negative charge in one region and a slight positive charge in another; this partial charge is due to the uneven sharing of electrons.  H2O is a highly polar molecule.  Water's polarity makes it very good at dissolving ionic compounds; when you put sodium chloride in water the positively charged sodium cations are attracted to the slight negative charge of the oxygen region of an H2O molecule and the chloride anions are attracted to the slightly positive hydrogen regions.  

Ionic bonds are the weakest of the three types of chemical bonds because the two ions will readily dissociate, one easily giving up an electron or electrons to the other.  Non-polar covalent bonds are the strongest.  The equal sharing of electrons makes it difficult to pull the elements apart.

Answer 3

An ionic bond (or electrovalent bond) is a type of chemical bond that can often form between metal and non-metal ions (or polyatomic ions such as ammonium) through electrostatic attraction. In short, it is a bond formed by the attraction between two oppositely charged ions.