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Module 2 : Molecular Structure

Lecture 7 : Homonuclear Diatomic Molecules

Recap
In this Lecture you have learnt the following
	Summary
	In this lecture, we have defined bonding and antibonding molecular orbitals (MOs) and plotted their contour diagrams, overlap diagrams, perspective plots as well as their values as a function of distance from the internuclear axis. A MO is a function of the coordinates of an electron and is a polycentric function. We also learnt how to write the Hamiltonian operator for a molecular system. Electronic configurations of homonuclear diatomics were described and the symmetries of the MOs were captured in the symbols and .

	The potential energy of these diatomics was plotted as a function of distance between the nuclei, and the energies of the MOs (relative to the energy of the AOs taken as zero) were also plotted as a function of the distance between the nuclei. The sign of potential energy should be noted with care. The qualitative concept of bond order was invoked to assess the relative strengths of single and multiple bonds.




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