Why is water such a good solvent for ionic compounds?
1 Answer
An old story....
Explanation:
Water is a strongly polar solvent...with substantial charge separation operating in the individual molecule. And we could represent by the formulation....
...and of course, this is the basis of
The water dipole is capable of acting as a donor towards Lewis-acidic metal centres..and of course, most of the time, with inorganic salts, we gots to spend a lot of time and trouble DRYING the salts, and removing water prior to reaction.
Water should be a good donor towards CATIONS...and indeed it is. It can offer SOME stabilization to anions...
And this all attempts to explain why water is such a prodigiously good solvent. Most subtances, inorganic or organic, HAVE SOME solubility in aqueous media. Ionic solutes can tend to have substantial solubilities.
