The structures of binary compounds. I. Phenomenological structure maps

A recently proposed phenomenological chemical scale chi is shown to provide excellent structural separation of all binary compounds with a given stoichiometry AmBn within a single-two-dimensional structure map ( chi A, chi B). The following structure maps are plotted and discussed: AB, AB2, AB3, AB4, AB5, AB6, AB11, AB12, AB13, A2B3, A2B5, A2B17, A3B4, A3B5, A3B7, A4B5, and A6B23. These maps are important for both pedagogical and predictive purposes. A structural energy difference theorem is proved which allows the microscopic origin of the structural trends to be explored in terms of physically intuitive concepts such as atomic size, electronegativity difference, and valence. The remaining papers of this series examine theoretically the pd-, dd- and sp-sp-bonded AB compounds.