Giant Ionic Lattices

So far we have learnt about the way that an individual ionic bond forms. This involves a single cation and a single anion coming together due to electrostatic attraction.

The simplified diagram below represents this situation. Rather than showing all of the subatomic particles that make up each ion, the cation is simply shown as a red circle with a plus sign (+) on it and the anion is shown as a blue circle with a minus sign (-) on it:

A simplified diagram of an ionic bond.

However, in reality there is never just a single ionic bond. What actually happens is that millions of cations and millions of anions come together to form a structure called a giant ionic lattice.

This is shown in the diagram below:

A giant ionic lattice.

In this giant ionic lattice, notice how each cation is only touching anions and each anion is only touching cations. The ions arrange themselves this way because oppositely charged ions are attracted to each other, whereas like charged ions repel each other.

Each cation has ionic bonds to all of the anions around it, and each anion has ionic bonds to all of the cations around it.

A giant ionic lattice is actually a three dimensional (3D) structure. The diagram above only shows a single layer. The full 3D structure looks more like this:

A giant ionic lattice shown in three dimensions.

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