Relationships among ionic lattice energies, molecular (formula unit) volumes, and thermochemical radii

The linear generalized equation described in this paper provides a further dimension to the prediction of lattice potential energies/enthalpies of ionic solids. First, it offers an alternative (and often more direct) approach to the well-established Kapustinskii equation (whose capabilities have also recently been extended by our recent provision of an extended set of thermochemical radii). Second, it makes possible the acquisition of lattice energy estimates for salts which, up until now, except for simple 1:1 salts, could not be considered because of lack of crystal structure data. We have generalized Bartlett's correlation for MX (1:1) salts, between the lattice enthalpy and the inverse cube root of the molecular (formula unit) volume, such as to render it applicable across an extended range of ionic salts for the estimation of lattice potential energies. When new salts are synthesized, acquisition of full crystal structure data is not always possible and powder data provides only minimal structural information-unit cell parameters and the number of molecules per cell. In such cases, lack of information about cation-anion distances prevents use of the Kapustinskii equation to predict the lattice energy of the salt. However, our new equation can be employed even when the latter information is not available. As is demonstrated, the approach can be utilized to predict and rationalize the thermochemistry in topical areas of synthetic inorganic chemistry as well as in emerging areas. This is illustrated by accounting for the failure to prepare diiodinetetrachloroaluminum(III), [I-2(+)][AlCl4-] and the instability of triiodinetetrafluoroarsenic(III), [I-3(+)][AsF6-](-) A series of effective close-packing volumes for a range of ions, which will be of interest to chemists, as measures of relative ionic size and which are of use in making our estimates of lattice energies, is generated from our approach.