On the nature of bonding in N5+ ion

The structure of recently synthetized N-5(+) ion was analyzed using two recently proposed methodologies, namely the generalized population analysis and the Fermi hole analysis. It has been shown that as a remnant of its synthetic precursor, the azide ion namely, the molecule contains the system of two partially perturbed three-center four-electron (3c-4e) bonds localized in the corresponding terminal NNN fragments. This structural assignment agrees with recently proposed analyses based on other methodologies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science BN. All rights reserved.