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why carbon always form covalent bond with other elements??

why carbon always form covalent bond with other elements??

Grade:10

1 Answers

Aarti Gupta
askIITians Faculty 300 Points
9 years ago
Carbon has the atomic no.6 and its configuration is 2,4 i.e 2 electrons in K and 4 electrons in L shell.The reason why it forms only covalent bonds are as follows-
1.The 4 valence electrons suggest that in order to aquire the noble gas configuration it can either lose or gain 4 elctrons.But loss or gain of 4 electrons by the carbon atom to form highly charged C4+ or C4- ions would require a very large amount of energy which is not ordinarily available during a chemical reaction.Thus it is not able to form ionic bonds and participate only in the formation of covalent bonds.
2.Another reason for its tendency to form covalent bonds only can be justified on the basis of its electronegativity value which is 2.5.Since it lies in group IV of the periodic table this value is neither very low nor very high.The other atoms with which generally it is linked in organic compounds,the electronegativity is not very much different and thus it forms bonds which are predominantly covalent.

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