Can ionic substances have high or low melting points?

Answer 1

All ionic compounds form crystals. So far as I know, there are no exceptions to this. Again, salts like to form crystals because when you have a whole bunch of little electrical positive and negative charges all stuck together, they seem to like to bunch into little stacking groups. The arrangement that these ions like to stack into is different, and is referred to as the "unit cell". There are ten or so different general shapes of unit cells. When you get to graduate school, ask me about them. For high school classes, it's really not all that important. Ionic compounds tend to have high melting and boiling points. When I say "high", what I mean is "very, very high." Most of the time, when you work with ionic compounds in a chemistry class, the melting point is hot enough that you can't melt them with a Bunsen burner. So, why are these temperatures so high? Well, it has to do with the way that ionic materials are held together. Remember how we said above that ionic compounds form crystals? These crystals are basically just great big blocks of positive and negative charges all stuck together. To break the positive and negative charges apart, it takes a huge amount of energy. This means that if we heat up the compound to add energy, it takes a huge amount of energy to break it apart.

Answer 2

Yes, they do, as ionic compounds are held together by electrostatic attraction, which is fairly strong. Molecular compounds, however, depending on polarity, have either London Dispersion forces (very weak - exist due to a momentary dipole), dipole-dipole forces (for polar covalent molecules only) or hydrogen bonds (involving H-N, H-O and H-F bonds).

For more information refer to the following link.

Answer 3

Because of the high electrostatic attraction between the positively cations with the negatively charged anions.

On a side note they are very brittle because when a sufficient amount of force is applied, like poles come into contact with each other (e.g positive and positive) and repel resulting in the separation.

To test the brittleness of an ionic compound you can get some salt and smash it with a hammer.

Hope this helps

Answer 4

No, they actually have a very high melting point.

Answer 5

No, Ionic bonds are stronger bonds so they have higher melting points.

Answer 6

Ionic compounds have high melting points.

Answer 7

Generally ionic substances have high melting and boiling points.