Resumen: The definition of the van der Waals crust as the spherical section between the atomic radius and the van der Waals radius of an element is discussed and a survey of the application of the penetration index between two interacting atoms in a wide variety of covalent, polar, coordinative or noncovalent bonding situations is presented. It is shown that this newly defined parameter permits the comparison of bonding between pairs of atoms in structural and computational studies independently of the atom sizes. Idioma: Inglés DOI: 10.1039/d3sc02238b Año: 2023 Publicado en: CHEMICAL SCIENCE 42 (2023), 11647-11688 ISSN: 2041-6520 Factor impacto JCR: 7.6 (2023) Categ. JCR: CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY rank: 40 / 231 = 0.173 (2023) - Q1 - T1 Factor impacto CITESCORE: 14.4 - Chemistry (all) (Q1)