The concept of the single bond between metals introduced for dinuclear metal carbonyl compounds is also very useful in explaining the structure of cluster carbonyl compounds containing two or more metals. The metal-metal bond has been established today as one of the common bonding modes, together with the metal-ligand bond, present in coordination complexes. However, it is not always clear to what extent the interaction between metals exists in the polynuclear complexes which have bridging ligands. As a criterion, the bond order can be evaluated from the bond distance in standard metals (for example, in bulk metals). However, even if the bond distance between metals analyzed by X-ray is sufficiently short, this does not prove the existence of a bond between metals unless the orbital conditions to account for such bonds are also fulfilled.