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Lone pairA lone pair is a (valence) electron pair without bonding or sharing with other atoms. They are found in the outermost electron shell of an atom, so lone pairs are a subset of a molecule's valence electrons. They can be identified by examining the outermost energy level of an atom — lone electron pairs consist of paired electrons as opposed to single electrons, which may appear if the atomic orbital is not full. Electron pairs are therefore considered lone pairs if two electrons are paired but are not used in bonding. Thus, the number of lone electrons plus the number of bonding electrons equal the total number of valence electrons from a compound.
A single lone pair can be found with atoms in the nitrogen group such as nitrogen in ammonia, two lone pairs can be found with atoms in the chalcogen group such as oxygen in water and the halogens can carry three lone pairs such as in hydrochloric acid. Additional recommended knowledge
Angle ChangesThe pairs often exhibit a negative polar character with their high charge density and are located closer to the atomic nucleus on average compared to the bonding pair of electrons. The presence of a lone pair decreases the bond angle between the bonding pair of electrons, due to their high electric charge which causes great repulsion between the electrons. They are also used in the formation of a dative bond. For example, the creation of the hydronium (H3O+) ion occurs when acids are dissolved in water and is due to the oxygen atom donating a lone pair to the hydrogen ion.
Unusual lone pairsA stereochemically active lone pair is also expected for divalent lead and tin ions due to their formal electronic configuration of ns2. In the solid state this results in the distorted metal coordination observed in the litharge structure adopted by both PbO and SnO. The formation of these heavy metal ns2 lone pairs which was previously attributed to intra-atomic hybridization of the metal s and p states[1] has recently been shown to have a strong anion dependence[2]. This dependence on the electronic states of the anion can explain why some divalent lead and tin materials such as PbS and SnTe show no stereochemical evidence of the lone pair and adopt the symmetric rocksalt crystal structure[3],[4].
See alsoReferences
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lone_pair". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |