Lewis acids and bases ionic bonding. Classically, the term "Lewis acid" is restricted to trigonal planar species with an empty p orbital, such as BR where R can be an organic substituent or a halide. For the purposes of discussion, even complex compounds such as EtAlCl and AlCl are treated as trigonal planar Lewis acids. Metal ions such as Na, Mg, and Ce, which are invariably complexed with additional ligands, are often sources of coordinatively unsaturated derivatives that form Lewis adducts upon reaction with a Lewis base[citation needed]. Other reactions might simply be referred to as "acid-catalyzed" reactions. Some compounds, such as HO, are
Gilbert N. Lewis been rationalized as a logical system, from which, given one relation, the rest could be derived. Moreover, these relations were inexact, applying only to ideal chemical systems. These were two outstanding problems of theoretical thermodynamics. In two long and ambitious theoretical papers in 1900 and 1901, Lewis tried to provide a solution. Lewis introduced the thermodynamic concept of activity and coined the term "fugacity". His new idea of fugacity, or "escaping tendency", was a function with the dimensions of pressure which expressed the tendency of a substance to pass from one chemical phase to another. Lewis believed that fugacity was