Commonly accepted, the conventional ionic model has been used foralmost one century to describe inorganic solids in terms ofcation-centred anionic polyhedrons.Unfortunately, the model is unableto either describe or understand why inorganic compounds adopt thestructures they have.In this book, the author exposes the limitationsof the ionic model and proposes new concepts, like the relationbetween oxidation and pressure and the extended Zintl-Klemm conceptcombined with Hoffmann's isolobality concept, hypervalency and theequivalence between electrons pairs and anions,to obtain a much deeper understanding of the structures of inorganic.The experimental datadiscussed along the text under the light of these concepts allow us to conclude that the structures of elements and alloys are present intheir oxides. Sometimes deformed, sometimes unchanged, or eventransformed by the laws of the Zintl-Klemm concept, elementalstructures are key to understand complex structures.
