Name: Bonding in Metals
Uploaded: 2019-07-19
Duration: 3 min 27 s
Description: In a metal, the attraction of metal cations (kernel) and the surrounding electrons are termed metallic bonding. Here's how this type of bonding explains the...

Question

What type of bonding exists in metallic solids ? Describe electron sea model and elaborate how this model explains the specific properties of metals.

Accepted Answer

Metallic bonding is a type of chemical bonding that arises from the electrostatic attractive force between conduction electrons (in the form of an electron cloud of delocalised electrons) and positively charged metal ions. It may be described as the sharing of free electrons among a structure of positively charged ions (cations).

Electron sea model:

The model of metallic bonding where electrons float free in a sea of electrons around metal atoms. This model proposes that all the metal atoms in a metallic solid contribute their valence electrons to form a "sea" of electron. The electrons present in the outer energy levels of the bonding metallic atoms are not held by any specific and can move easily from one atom to the next.

The freedom of electrons to migrate also gives metal atoms, or layers of them, the capacity to slide past each other. Locally, bonds can easily be broken and replaced by new ones after a deformation. This process does not affect the communal metallic bonding very much, which gives rise to metals' characteristic malleability and ductility.

Metals are typically also good conductors of heat, but the conduction electrons only contribute partly to this phenomenon. Collective (i.e., delocalised) vibrations of the atoms, known as phonons that travel through the solid as a wave, are bigger contributors.

However, a substance such as diamond, which conducts heat quite well, is not an electrical conductor. This is not a consequence of delocalisation being absent in diamond, but simply that carbon is not electron deficient.

What type of bonding exists in metallic solids ? Describe electron sea model and elaborate how this model explains the specific properties of metals.

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