![]() quantum mechanics calculations say so) have a greater contribution further away from the nucleus with at least one additional lobe. This trend is most obvious when going horizontally along a group: a lithium atom is much larger than a neon atom even though the valence electrons are in the same shell - and it is even true for the difference between boron and neon, if you want to restrict it to a single subshell.Įach time a new shell is opened, the atomic radius jumps upwards since these always (i.e. With each additional proton that is added to a nucleus, the attraction between the nucleus and the electrons is increased and thus the wave function is contracted. ![]() If you look at the Van der Waals radii of the elements, (more representative of a monoatomic gaseous atom) you will see that aluminum is actually smaller though not by a lot, giving some credence to the d-electrons explanations, but not a complete explanation in regard to the metallic radius. This value between the bonded atoms lowers the average distance between atoms giving gallium a lower metallic radius. This difference in coordination requires a goldschmidt correction to compare values as if gallium were 12-coordinated which makes the gallium's corrected metallic radius actually even smaller compared to aluminum at about $\mathrm$ which is very much smaller than the metallic radii of either element. ![]() Gallium has an orthorhombic crystal structure (CN = 6) whereas as aluminum has a face-centered cubic crystal structure (CN = 12). Tanget relevant to the question and other answers: It has a significant dependence on crystal structure. First, you have to look at the definition of metallic radius, which is the half distance between two atoms in a lattice. ![]()
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