An Excursion from Normal to Inverted CC Bonds Shows a Clear Demarcation between Covalent and Charge‐Shift CC Bonds

What is the nature of the C-C bond? Valence bond and electron density computations of 16 C-C bonds show two families of bonds that flesh out as a phase diagram. One family, involving ethane, cyclopropane and so forth, is typified by covalent C-C bonding wherein covalent spin-pairing accounts for most of the bond energy. The second family includes the inverted bridgehead bonds of small propellanes, where the bond is neither covalent nor ionic, but owes its existence to the resonance stabilization between the respective structures; hence a charge-shift (CS) bond. The dual family also emerges from calculated and experimental electron density properties. Covalent C-C bonds are characterized by negative Laplacians of the density, whereas CS-bonds display small or positive Laplacians. The positive Laplacian defines a region suffering from neighbouring repulsive interactions, which is precisely the case in the inverted bonding region. Such regions are rich in kinetic energy, and indeed the energy-density analysis reveals that CS-bonds are richer in kinetic energy than the covalent C-C bonds. The large covalent-ionic resonance energy is precisely the mechanism that lowers the kinetic energy in the bonding region and restores equilibrium bonding. Thus, different degrees of repulsive strain create two bonding families of the same chemical bond made from a single atomic constituent. It is further shown that the idea of repulsive strain is portable and can predict the properties of propellanes of various sizes and different wing substituents. Experimentally (M. Messerschmidt, S. Scheins, L. Bruberth, M. Patzel, G. Szeimies, C. Paulman, P. Luger, Angew. Chem. 2005, 117, 3993-3997; Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2005, 44, 3925-3928), the C-C bond families are beautifully represented in [1.1.1]propellane, where the inverted C-C is a CS-bond, while the wings are made from covalent C-C bonds. What other manifestations can we expect from CS-bonds? Answers from experiment have the potential of recharting the mental map of chemical bonding.