The Coordination Number – an “Inorganic Chameleon”

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The purpose of the present article is to describe the changing ambiguous character of the term “coordination number” and its present‐day definition in structural chemistry, particularly of typical solids (assemblies of particles with short‐range and long‐range order). An effort is made at the same time to describe the crystal structure of solids as simply as possible while also taking long‐range order into account, i.e. by determining “effective” coordination numbers by the geometrical “polyhedron method” or from MAPLE (Madelung Part of Lattice Energy) values.