Covalent Bonding
and Lewis Structures

covalent bond:  a chemical bond consisting of two or more shared electrons.

covalent compound (also known as a molecular compound):  a compound made of atoms joined by covalent bonds.

· covalent bonding occurs between non-metals

· electrons are shared in pairs—each pair usually contains one electron that came from each atom.

For example, a chlorine atom has seven valence electrons.  The Lewis dot structure for chlorine is:

Note that the chlorine atom has seven valence electrons.  It needs to borrow one more electron to fill its valent shell. 

The chlorine atom needs to share an electron in order to borrow one.  This shared pair of electrons is the covalent bond between the two atoms:

When each of the Cl atoms has both of the shared electrons, it has a full valent shell.  This means each Cl atom gets a full valent shell some of the time.

This drawing is called a “Lewis structure,” named after its inventor, G. N. Lewis.  In a Lewis structure, unshared electrons are shown as dots (just like the Lewis dot diagram), and bonds are shown as line segments.  Usually, the dots at the ends of the line segments are omitted, which makes the Lewis structure for chlorine (Cl₂) look like the following:

For another example, oxygen has six unpaired electrons, which means an oxygen atom needs two more electrons to fill its valent shell.  This means that each oxygen atom in O₂ will share two electrons:

Just like the example with Cl₂, each oxygen atom has a full valent shell whenever it has all four of the shared electrons.

One pair of shared electrons is called a single bond.  The oxygen molecule above has two pairs of shared electrons, which is called a double bond.

Rules for Drawing Lewis Structures

1. Neutral atoms will make the same number of bonds as the number of additional electrons they need.

2. Atoms that make only one bond (i.e., that need only one more electron) will almost always be on the outside (i.e., not in the center).

3. The least electronegative atom will almost always be in the center.

4. The total number of bonds in a Lewis structure will usually be:

5. If you can’t draw a correct structure with neutral atoms, try moving one electron (at a time) from the central atom to the most electronegative atom that doesn’t yet have a negative charge.

6. If the structure is for a charged ion, add or remove the appropriate number of electrons from your structure.

7. If you need to add electrons, add them to the most electronegative atom first.

8. If you need to remove electrons, remove them from the least electronegative atom first.

9. If you can draw more than one structure, the one maximum charge on an atom that is lowest is preferred.  If you can draw more than one such structure, the structure with the fewest number of charged atoms is preferred.

10.  No two atoms can have more than a triple bond between them.

Common Atoms in Lewis Structures

Each atom (other than hydrogen) must have a full octet (8 electrons), made of a combination of bonds and lone pairs.  Here are the most common combinations.

Atoms in the carbon group (C, Si) always have 4 bonds and no lone pairs:

Atoms in the nitrogen group (N, P, As) always have 3 bonds and one lone pair:

Atoms in the oxygen group (O, S, Se, Te) always have 2 bonds and 2 lone pairs:

The halogens (F, Cl, Br, I) have 1 bond and 3 lone pairs; hydrogen (H) has 1 bond and no lone pairs: