What type of bonding is present in AlCl3?
Hello! Sure. On a general note, I feel it is important to remember that in order to understand bonding, we need to understand what electronegativity means. Electronegativity, according to Jim Clarks (www.chemguide.co.uk), is the measure of the tendency of an atom to attract a bonding pair of electrons. It is this difference in electronegativity that determines whether a bond is ionic, covalent, polar or non-polar etc. Covalent bonding refers to bonding between atoms of similar electronegativity. Covalent bonds are usually formed between non-metals, though there may be cases involving a metal and a non-metal (Aluminium Chloride, AlCl3, for example). There are 2 types of structures resulting from covalent bonding: simple molecular structure (e.g. Carbon Dioxide CO2), or giant molecular structure (e.g. diamond, graphite, Silicon Dioxide SiO2 etc). Ionic bonding, on the other hand, results when there is a complete transfer of electron(s) from one atom to another. As this is only possible i
