So can somebody please tell me why C-Cl dipole moment is more than C-F...
**C-Cl Dipole Moment vs C-F Dipole Moment**
**Introduction:**
In organic chemistry, the dipole moment is a measure of the polarity of a chemical bond. It indicates the separation of positive and negative charges in a molecule. The dipole moment depends on factors such as electronegativity, bond length, and molecular geometry.
**Electronegativity:**
Electronegativity is the ability of an atom to attract electrons towards itself in a covalent bond. Fluorine (F) is more electronegative than chlorine (Cl) due to its smaller atomic size and higher effective nuclear charge. This implies that fluorine has a greater ability to attract electrons towards itself compared to chlorine.
**Bond Length:**
The bond length is the distance between the nuclei of two bonded atoms. In general, the bond length decreases as the atomic size decreases. Fluorine is smaller in size than chlorine, so the C-F bond is shorter than the C-Cl bond.
**Dipole Moment:**
The dipole moment of a bond is given by the product of the magnitude of the charge (q) and the distance of separation (r) between the charges. Mathematically, it can be represented as μ = q × r.
**Effect of Electronegativity:**
Although fluorine is more electronegative than chlorine, the C-Cl bond has a higher dipole moment compared to the C-F bond. This is because the dipole moment also depends on the bond length. The longer C-Cl bond compensates for the difference in electronegativity, resulting in a higher dipole moment.
**Explanation:**
1. **C-F Bond:** The C-F bond is shorter due to the small atomic size of fluorine. However, the electronegativity difference between carbon and fluorine increases the electron density towards fluorine, leading to a partial negative charge on the fluorine atom and a partial positive charge on the carbon atom. This creates a dipole moment in the C-F bond, but it is relatively smaller due to the shorter bond length.
2. **C-Cl Bond:** The C-Cl bond is longer compared to the C-F bond due to the larger atomic size of chlorine. Although chlorine is less electronegative than fluorine, the longer bond compensates for the electronegativity difference. As a result, the dipole moment in the C-Cl bond is higher than in the C-F bond.
**Conclusion:**
In summary, the C-Cl bond has a higher dipole moment than the C-F bond despite fluorine being more electronegative because the longer bond length of C-Cl compensates for the electronegativity difference.
So can somebody please tell me why C-Cl dipole moment is more than C-F...
C-Cl has larger dipole moment than C-F because dipole moment is based on the product of distance and charge, and not just charge alone. Fluorine is more electronegative than chlorine, but, the carbon-fluorine bond is also much shorter than the carbon-chlorine bond: 139 pm vs 178 pm. That's why the dipole moment of C-Cl is higher than the dipole moment of C-F.