Recognizing cooridnate covalent bonds

[306134737]

Hi, I ran into issues during practice problems that were related to coordinate covalent bonds/lewis acids and bases. How can you tell when something will be a coordinate covalent bond? Do you have to draw out the lewis structures and realize that an atom must give away its electron pair?

[Artemis Yang 1C]

You know it is a coordinate covalent bond when it is a Lewis acid/base reaction because the Lewis base is giving both the electrons in the bond. When you recognize that it is Lewis acid/base, you know it is always coordinate covalent so you wouldn't necessarily need to draw it.

[sumedhashastry [1g]]

Hi! An example I can think of that demonstrates this concept is BF3 in which boron is electron deficient and it can bind to a lone fluorine atom which contributes two electrons to create BF4, a coordinate covalent bond.