Ammonium ion lewis structure

[Emily Widjaja 3A]

Hello,

On today's lecture, Dr Lavelle discussed the lewis structure of ammonium. I am kind of confused if the Nitrogen central atom is supposed to have a dative covalent bond to one of the hydrogens (so that the electron lost for the +1 charge would be that of hydrogen's), or if nitrogen should have 4 normal covalent bonds (sharing) with the hydrogens, with the electron lost (for the +1 charge) belonging to nitrogen.

thank you!

[Allison Peng 1D]

I think when we learn formal charges it will be easier to understand this, but the formal charge of Nitrogen is +1 in this case so I guess you can think of it as Nitrogen losing the electron (since it starts out with 5 e- and now it has 1/2(8) = 4 e- which is positive relative to 5e-.

[Irene Kim 3E]

Hi,
I agree with the previous reply that the electrons lost belong to the nitrogen. Nitrogen has 5 valence electrons to begin with, and hydrogen has one; by forming a covalent bond with 4 hydrogen atoms, nitrogen fills its outer shell to 9 electrons, giving it a +1 charge.

[Carmen Kim 3I]

Hi,
As others mentioned above, since Nitrogen has a charge of +1, it is easy to think that nitrogen will likely lose the electron. Nitrogen starts with five valence electrons when hydrogen has one valence electron to begin with. By forming a dative covalent bond with four hydrogen atoms, the NH4+ will end up with a +1 charge.