The bond valence model, a description of acid-base bonding, is widely used for analysing and modelling the structures and properties of solids and liquids. Unlike other models of inorganic chemical bonding, the bond valence model is simple, intuitive, and predictive, and is accessible to anyone with a pocket calculator and a secondary school command of chemistry and physics. This new edition of The Chemical Bond in Inorganic Chemistry: The Bond Valence Model shows how chemical properties arise naturally from the conflict between the constraints of chemistry and those of three-dimensional space.

The book derives the rules of the bond valence model, as well as those of the traditional covalent, ionic and popular VSEPR models, by identifying the chemical bond with the electrostatic flux linking the bonded atoms. Most of the new edition is devoted to showing how to apply these ideas to real materials including crystals, liquids, glasses and surfaces. The work includes detailed examples of applications, and the final chapter explores the relationship between the flux and quantum theories of the bond.

I. David Brown's profile page

David Brown is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

"Neatly crystallizes concepts, precisely defines these concepts and brings to the fore many phenomena that can be described by the bond-valence model."

--Current Engineering Practice

Review from previous edition: "A highly readable book about a theory that, though it has long found application in inorganic crystal chemistry, deserves to be used more widely."

--Crystallography News