Question #688a7
1 Answer
Apr 17, 2015
Metalloids form covalent bonds with atoms of metals, nonmetals and other metalloids. They can easily take electrons from metals and lose electrons to nonmetals.
Metalloids does not form ionic bond.
The reason is that they have relatively high ionisation potentials and low electron affinities. (Some of the ionisation potentials are not all that high, but the ions formed would be quite big so they wouldn't pack closely into an ionic lattice. That makes it difficult to offset the energy needed to ionise the element against the crystal lattice energy)
