Covalent Bonds

[davidryan3f]

This may be a dumb question but im a little confused. Can non metals form cations. if not, why can't they?

[705192887]

No such thing as a dumb question, David!! And, to answer your question, nonmetals (right side of periodic table) do not form cations because they only gain a few electrons to fill their octet, meaning they become anions. Metals, on the other hand, lose electrons to fill their octet. Hope this helps! I can give you a more detailed response if you would like! :)

[ElliotPourdavoud 1A]

Non metals tend to gain an electron simply due to their valence electrons needing a small number of electrons to complete their octet rather than losing those electrons.

[Ashley Kim]

Nonmetals also tend to gain electrons more frequently due to their high electronegativity.

[Manas Jinka]

Nonmetals usually need a few electrons to complete a stable shell. Thus, they usually become anions.

[Nina Do 4L]

Covalent bonds tend to share electrons to complete the octet rule which makes them anions.

[Xingzheng Sun 2K]

No, because metals tend to form cations and nonmetals tend to form anions.

[Zubair Ahmed 1L]

Just to reiterate, nonmetals(anions) cannot become cations due to their high electronegativity and lack of electrons in their valence shell. Nonmetals such as chlorine with 7 valence electrons only needs one more electron to complete their octet so they would attract other elements in giving up an electron to complete the octet instead of giving up one of their own electrons.

[Hannah Pham 1D]

Non metals cannot form cations; instead, they form anions and metals form cations.

[George Ghaly 2L]

Non metals generally do not become cations because they have a very high electron affinity therefore their ionization energies would be very high making it unlikely for them to lose an electron.

[Alyssa Wilson 2A]

For example a covalent bond would be (H-H) they can either be polar/non-polar. Since ionization energies are too high, it will therefore form between nonmetals.

[Henry Dudley 1G]

If a metal bonds with a nonmetal is this considered a covalent bond?

[Chloe Qiao 4C]

Usually two non-metals bond to form a covalent bond, while a metal and a non-metal bond to form an ionic bond.

[Xinyi Zeng 4C]

If a metal bonds with a nonmetal is this considered a covalent bond?

Usually the bond formed between a metal and a nonmetal is an ionic bond. But it may have a covalent character as the nature of the bond formed between two atoms really depends on the electronegativity between the two atoms that will bond together.
Take AlCl3 as an example, supposedly Al-Cl should be an ionic bond, but because Cl- is highly polarizable while Al3+ has a high polarizing power, the electron density existed between cation and anion becomes shared between them, and hence the Al-Cl bond takes a pretty strong covalent character, so it is actually considered as a covalent bond.

[Esther Lee 4H]

this is gonna sound really dumb too but it's easy to remember that cations lose electrons because its a "pawsitive" ion and an anion stands for "a negative ion"

[Nicolle Fernandez 1E]

No, non-metals cannot form cations because they need to gain few electrons to complete the outer shell, so they become anions.

[Daniel Chang 3I]

non-metals usually are the composition of covalent bonds and therefore share electrons to fill their outer shell and are anions from gaining and sharing electrons