text: The Born–Haber cycle is an approach to analyze reaction  energies. It was named after two German scientists, Max Born and Fritz Haber, who developed it in 1919. It was also independently formulated by Kasimir Fajans and published concurrently in the same journal. The cycle is concerned with the formation of an ionic compound from the reaction of a metal (often a Group I or Group II element) with a halogen or other non-metallic element such as oxygen.
  Born–Haber cycles are used primarily as a means of calculating  lattice energy (or more precisely enthalpy), which cannot otherwise be measured directly. The lattice enthalpy is the enthalpy change involved in the formation of an ionic compound from gaseous ions (an exothermic process), or sometimes defined as the energy to break the ionic compound into gaseous ions (an endothermic process). A Born–Haber cycle applies Hess's law to calculate the lattice enthalpy by comparing the standard enthalpy change of formation of the ionic compound (from the elements) to the enthalpy required to make gaseous ions from the elements.