A researcher in Spain has analysed over five million intermolecular distances to propose a consistent set of van der Waals radii for the most naturally occurring elements.
Santiago Alvarez at the University of Barcelona was about to set his students an assignment analysing intermolecular distances involving lanthanides when he came across a problem. ‘I realised that such an exercise would not work because the Cambridge Structural Database arbitrarily assigned van der Waals radii of 2.0 Å to all elements not included in the short list established by [Arnold] Bondi. It seemed to me that a larger set of consistent Van der Waals radii was needed.’
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A cartography of the van der Waals territories
Santiago Alvarez, Dalton Trans., 2013, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C3DT50599E
