Van der Waals radius

van der Waals radii are established from contact distances between non-bonding atoms in touching molecules or atoms.

You need Flash enabled on your computer to view this page.

Units

pm

Notes

Van der Waals radii may be established from neighbour-neighbour interactions in crystals and from gas critical volumes. Values from tables in different sources differ. Those quoted in WebElements are taken from reference 1 while other marginally different compilations are located in references 2-5. Users of the Chemical Database Service (CDS) at Daresbury who make use of the Cambridge Structural Database System will also find these values reproduced in the "Getting Started" user manual.

Literature sources

  1. A. Bondi, J. Phys. Chem., 1964, 68, 441.
  2. L. Pauling, The Nature of the Chemical Bond, Cornell University Press, USA, 1945.
  3. J.E. Huheey, E.A. Keiter, and R.L. Keiter in Inorganic Chemistry : Principles of Structure and Reactivity, 4th edition, HarperCollins, New York, USA, 1993.W.W. Porterfield in Inorganic chemistry, a unified approach, Addison Wesley Publishing Co., Reading Massachusetts, USA, 1984.
  4. A.M. James and M.P. Lord in Macmillan's Chemical and Physical Data, Macmillan, London, UK, 1992.

WebElements Shop

WebElements now has an online shop at which you can buy periodic table posters, mugs, T-shirts, games, molecular models, and more.

WebElements poster Periodic table t-shirts Periodic table mouse mats Molymod molecular model kits Periodic table card games

Isotope data Crystal structure Electronic data History Geology Atom sizes Compounds