The Bond-Valence Method: An Empirical Approach to Chemical Structure and Bonding

This chapter describes a simple but powerful approach to predicting the structure and properties of complex solids and liquids. It is based on studies of large numbers of crystal structures and the empirical concepts of chemical bond and atomic valence. The valence of an atom is assumed to be distributed between the bonds it forms. The resulting bond valences correlate well with bond lengths and other bond properties. Bond valences determined …