Metavalent or Hypervalent Bonding: Is There a Chance for Reconciliation?

A family of solids including crystalline phase change materials such as GeTe and Sb2 Te3 , topological insulators like Bi2 Se3, and halide perovskites such as CsPbI3 possesses an unconventional property portfolio that seems incompatible with ionic, metallic, or covalent bonding. Instead, evidence is found for a bonding mechanism characterized by half-filled p-bands and a competition between electron localization and delocalization. Different bonding concepts have recently been suggested based on quantum chemical bonding descriptors which either define the bonds in these solids as electron-deficient (metavalent) or electron-rich (hypervalent). This disagreement raises concerns about the accuracy of quantum-chemical bonding descriptors is showed. Here independent of the approach chosen, electron-deficient bonds govern the materials mentioned above is showed. A detailed analysis of bonding in electron-rich XeF2 and electron-deficient GeTe shows that in both cases p-electrons govern bonding, while s-electrons only play a minor role. Yet, the properties of the electron-deficient crystals are very different from molecular crystals of electron-rich XeF2 or electron-deficient B2 H6 . The unique properties of phase change materials and related solids can be attributed to an extended system of half-filled bonds, providing further arguments as to why a distinct nomenclature such as metavalent bonding is adequate and appropriate for these solids.

Undistorted linear Bi chains with hypervalent bonding in La3TiBi5 from single-crystal X-ray diffraction

The crystal structure of the lanthanum titanium bismuthide La₃TiBi₅ (Pearson code hP18, Wyckoff sequence b d g2) has been established from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data and analyzed in detail using first-principles calculations. There are no anomalies pertaining to the atomic displacement parameter of the Ti site, previously reported based on a powder X-ray diffraction analysis of this compound. The anionic substructure contains columns of face-sharing TiBi₆ octahedra and linear Bi chains. Due to a significant La(5d) and Bi(6p) orbital mixing, a perfectly one-dimensional character of the Bi chains is not realised, while a three-dimensional electronic structure is established instead. The latter fact explains the stability of the polyanionic pnictide units against Peierls distortions. The hypervalent bonding in the Bi chains is reflected in a rather long Bi-Bi distance of 3.2264 (4) Å and a typical pattern of bonding and antibonding interactions, as revealed by electronic structure calculations.

The solvent effect on two competing reaction mechanisms involving hypervalent iodine reagents (λ(3)-iodanes): facing the limit of the stationary quantum chemical approach

Trifluoromethylation of acetonitrile with 3,3-dimethyl-1-(trifluoromethyl)-1λ(3),2- benziodoxol is assumed to occur via reductive elimination (RE) of the electrophilic CF3-ligand and MeCN bound to the hypervalent iodine. Computations in gas phase showed that the reaction might also occur via an SN2 mechanism. There is a substantial solvent effect present for both reaction mechanisms, and their energies of activation are very sensitive toward the solvent model used (implicit, microsolvation, and cluster-continuum). With polarizable continuum model-based methods, the SN2 mechanism becomes less favorable. Applying the cluster-continuum model, using a shell of solvent molecules derived from ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations, the gap between the two activation barriers ( ΔΔG‡) is lowered to a few kcal mol(-1) and also shows that the activation entropies (ΔS‡) and volumes (ΔV‡) for the two mechanisms differ substantially. A quantitative assessment of ΔΔG‡ will therefore only be possible using AIMD. A natural bond orbital-analysis gives further insight into the activation of the CF3-reagent by protonation.