PCl₅ Hybridization: Understanding Trigonal Bipyramidal Structure

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Question

General Science

The PCl ₅ molecule has trigonal bipyramidal structure. Therefore, the hybridization of p orbitals should be __________.

This question was previously asked in

CDS I 2019 Elementary Mathematics Previous Year Paper (03-Feb-2019)

sp ²

sp ³

dsp ²

dsp ³

The correct answer is

dsp ³

dsp 3

In molecules with lone pairs and a steric number of 5, the lone pairs preferentially occupy the equatorial positions because they experience less repulsion from other electron groups compared to the axial positions. However, in PCl₅, there are no lone pairs, so all five Cl atoms occupy these positions.

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