Showing posts with label hydrogen bond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hydrogen bond. Show all posts

Apr 28, 2011

Hydrogen Bonding

What is hydrogen bonding?
A hydrogen bond is the attractive interaction of a hydrogen atom with an electronegative atom, such as nitrogen, oxygen or fluorine, that comes from another molecule or chemical group. The hydrogen must be covalently bonded to another electronegative atom to create the bond. These bonds can occur between molecules (intermolecularly), or within different parts of a single molecule (intramolecularly).
Intermolecular hydrogen bonding:
Intermolecular hydrogen bonding is seen in water molecule as a result of interaction between the oxygen and hydrogen atom of water molecule. Since oxygen is somewhat electronegative, it acquires electrons of both hydrogen atom towards itself and thus the oxygen atom seem to have negative charge while hydrogen with positive.The hydrogen bond is the result of interaction between these two charges.
Intermolecular Hydrogen bonding in water molecules
In the above fig. the dotted lines represents the Hydrogen bond between water molecules.