Bond triangles or Van Arkel-Ketelaar triangles are triangles used to show different compounds in varying degrees of ionic, metallic and covalent bonding. Different compounds can be placed around the triangle. On the right side ionic-covalent should be compounds with varyin difference in electronegativity, in the covalent corner compounds with equal electronegativity such as Cl_{2, in the ionic corner compounds with big electronegativity difference such as NaCl. The metallic-covalent are for compounds with varying degree of directionality in the bond. At one extreme is metallic bonds with delocalized bonding and the other are covalent bonds in which the orbitals overlap in a particular direction. The ionic-metallic axis are for delocalized bonds with varying electronegativity difference. The bond triangle shows that ionic, metallic and covalent bonds are not just particular bonds of a specific type, they are interconnected and different compounds have varying degrees of different bonding character, covalent bonds with large ionic character are called polar covalent bonds.}

                 Ionic
                   /\ 
                  /  \
                 /    \
                /      \
               /        \
              /          \
             /            \
            /              \
           /                \
          /                  \
         ----------------------
Metallic                        Covalent

External links

• Van Arkel-Ketelaar Triangles of Bonding (http://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/37_ak/triangles.html)