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Crystallography was a little bit weird to me as it was the very first time I was exposed to such things!!
The subject of atomic bonding seems more familiar as it is more like what goes on in chemistry and chemical properties of material. There are three types of Primary Bonding between atoms in Molecular Structures: ionic, covalent, and metallic. There are also Inter-molecular Bonds (Secondary Bonds) known as Van Der Waals Forces which are weaker than the primary bond.
In an Ionic Bond two ions (Cation and Onion) attract each other because they have opposite electric charges. Cations have positive and anions have negative charges. In this attraction one or more electrons are transferred from the covalence shell of one atom to the covalence shell of the other one. Note that they don't share electron. Electrons go from one atom to the other one. This type of bonding happens between atoms with high Electron Affinity and low Ionization Energy. The difference in the Electronegativity of the atoms should be at least 1.7 for the ionic bonding to occur.
[To be Continued]
Some gases exists as Diatomic Molecules in their natural state such as O2, N2, H2, and Cl2. The two atoms in these gas molecules have the same electronegativity and ionization energy and therefore, their bond is not an ionic bond. They are only sharing electron between their atoms to become stable in nature. This is the Covalent Bonding which typically forms in organic and polymer compounds. In these gases, the atoms are the same and so their bond is purely covalent but sometimes the atoms are not the same but still they are sharing electrons one less or more than the other one which results in a mixture of ionic and covalent bond in the molecule. Still the dominant bond determines how the bonding is called. This is why if the difference in the electronegativity of the atoms is less than 1.7 it is called covalent bonding.
Sometimes, the electrons in the molecule are just free to move from this atom to another atom. These electrons get attracted to the positive ions in the molecular structure and causes a bond between the atoms. This bond is called Metallic Bonding in which the atoms can move in three dimensions and there is no specific direction like the other two types of bonding.
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