Stereochemistry of vanadium in oxygen-containing compounds

Abstract

Using Voronoi-Dirichlet (VD) polyhedra and the method of overlapping spheres, we analyze the coordination of 714 crystallographically different vanadium atoms in the structure of compounds containing VO n polyhedra. Vanadium atoms are found to be bonded to 4, 5, 6, or 7 oxygen atoms. The effect of the valence state and coordination number of vanadium atoms on the main parameters of their VD polyhedra is considered. A unified linear dependence between the solid angles of VD polyhedron faces corresponding to V-O bonds and the respective interatomic distances varying in a range of 1.55 A to 2.79 A is stated to exist. It is shown that the parameters of VD polyhedra can be used to determine the valence state of vanadium atoms.