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Why doesn't Oxygen and Sodium ion form covalent bond?
When mixing a Carboxylic Acid (RCO2H) and Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) you get RCOO(-)Na(+)
Why do they remain in an ionic bond --simply attracted-- instead of sharing the electrons.
Is it because technically Oxygen only has 1 electron is isn't "using"? If you could make RCOO(2-) would it covalently bond to Na(+)??
I thought they would share the one electron and just have it EXTREMELY polar... or is that what an ionic bond is???
2 Answers
- SS4Lv 71 decade agoFavourite answer
Yes an ionic bond may be considered a highly polar bond.
Na does not for covalent bonds because sodium has just one electron in it's outer shell and it's keen to get rid in order to get the electron configuration of a noble gas. It is so keen it doesn't share
- 1 decade ago
The short answer is that oxygen doesn't have much to do with it; Na just doesn't form covalent bonds.
The long answer is look at the electron shells. Na has just one electron "s1" on the third shell. So its preference (from an electrochemical standpoint) is to give up the electron (form an ionic bond) and go to a filled s2p6 on the second shell. To form a covalent bond it would be essentially filling the 3s2 pair, which is unstable since Na is a small element and the nucleus does not have enough positive charge to hang on to the extra electron.
