Halogen bonding, chalcogen bonding, pnictogen bonding, tetrel bonding: origins, current status and discussion

The role of the closing lecture in a Faraday Discussion is to summarise the contributions made to the Discussion over the course of the meeting and in so doing capture the main themes that have arisen. This article is based upon my Closing Remarks Lecture at the 203rd Faraday Discussion meeting on Halogen Bonding in Supramolecular and Solid State Chemistry, held in Ottawa, Canada, on 10-12th July, 2017. The Discussion included papers on fundamentals and applications of halogen bonding in the solid state and solution phase. Analogous interactions involving main group elements outside group 17 were also examined. In the closing lecture and in this article these contributions have been grouped into the four themes: (a) fundamentals, (b) beyond the halogen bond, (c) characterisation, and (d) applications. The lecture and paper also include a short reflection on past work that has a bearing on the Discussion.