Bond orders, significance

Because aH bonds within the polymethine chain of symmetrical PMDs are significantly equalized and change slightly on excitation, relatively smaH Stokes shifts (500 600 cm ) are observed in their spectra. In unsymmetrical PMDs, the essential bond alternation exists in the ground state. However, bond orders in the excited state are found to be insensitive to the symmetry perturbation. As a result, the deviations of fluorescence maxima, are much lower than those of absorption maxima, (3,10,56—58). The vinylene shifts of fluorescence maxima of unsymmetrical PMDs are practicaHy constant and equal to 100 nm (57). 

This feature of the electronic structure of these inorganic rings is especially dramatic for the six-atom system [SsNs], which is able to accommodate ten r-electrons, cf. six r-electrons for CeHg. The electron-richness of [SsNs] results in a significantly lower r-bond order of 0.17... 

It would be desirable to achieve a quantitative version of the Hammond postulate. For this purpose we need a measure of progress along the reaction coordinate. Several authors have used the bond order for this measure.The chemical significance of bond order is that it is the number of covalent bonds between two atoms thus the bond orders of the C—C, C==C, bonds are 1, 2, and 3,... 

Tire calculated Ca-N" bond lengths, Table III, of these pyridinium cations [as well as the bond orders, BO, and the reaction energies, zIT/r, for a hypothetical dissociation to give the corresponding carbenium ion 44 and pyridine (Scheme 13)] indicate that these bonds are significantly weakened... 

Huber et al. 189) have investigated cocondensation (4.2—10 °K) reactions between Ni, Pd and Pt and molecular oxygen in pure O2 and Oj/Ar matrices. These reactions were studied by matrix isolation infra-red spectroscopy, including isotopic and diffusion controlled warm-up studies. They established that both M(02) and (0j)M(02) species were present. The 0-0 bond order suggested significant back-bonding, and this led them to reject the monodentate stmcture. Fig. 8 (b). 

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