Which type of bond is present in saturated hydrocarbons?

Saturated hydrocarbons are characterized by the presence of only single bonds between carbon atoms, which means they exclusively contain sigma bonds. This type of bond forms when two atoms share a pair of electrons and involves the head-on overlap of atomic orbitals. In saturated hydrocarbons, like alkanes, each carbon atom forms four sigma bonds, either to other carbon atoms or to hydrogen atoms, leading to a structure that is fully "saturated" with hydrogen atoms.

In contrast, unsaturated hydrocarbons would contain pi bonds, which occur in the presence of double or triple bonds, but this is not the case for saturated hydrocarbons. Thus, the defining feature of those compounds is that they only utilize sigma bonding for their structure, making them less reactive than their unsaturated counterparts, which have more complex bonding patterns due to the presence of pi bonds.