Lately, I was reading The Lewis Theory of Covalent Bonding by Peter Atkins in Appendix 4 of 'Elements of Physical Chemistry'. There he was talking about expansion of octet . As he wrote:
Many molecules cannot be written in a way that conforms to the octet rule. Those classified as hypervalent molecules requires an expansion of octet. Although it is often stated that octet expansion requires the involvement of d-orbitals, and is therefore confined to Period 3 and subsequent elements, there is good evidence to suggest that octet expansion is a consequence of an atom's size, not its intrinsic orbital structure. [...]
I had always bore in mind that octet expansion was always due to d orbitals.
But size of atoms? How can it be related to octet expansion?
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