The borderless world of chemical bonding across the van der Waals crust and the valence region

The definition of the van der Waals crust as the spherical section between the atomic radius and the van der Waals radius of an element is discussed and a survey of the application of the penetration index between two interacting atoms in a wide variety of covalent, polar, coordinative or noncovalent bonding situations is presented. It is shown that this newly defined parameter permits the comparison of bonding between pairs of atoms in structural and computational studies independently of the atom sizes.

Automated summary

This paper discusses the definition of the van der Waals crust and its application in various bonding situations. The penetration index is introduced as a parameter that allows the comparison of bonding between pairs of atoms independently of the atom sizes.