Ferromagnetic bonding

Ferromagnetic Bonds Properties of No-pair Bonded High-Spin Lithium Clusters (N-2-12). 

Finally, the use of simple valence bond theory has led recently to a significant discovery concerning the nature of metals. Many years ago one of us noticed, based on an analysis of the experimental values of the saturation ferromagnetic moment per atom of the metals of the iron group and their alloys, that for a substance to have metallic properties, 0.72 orbital per atom, the metallic orbital, must be available to permit the unsynchronized resonance that confers metallic properties on a substance.34 38 Using lithium as an example, unsynchronized resonance refers to such structures as follows. 

In order to explain the observed saturation ferromagnetic moment of Fe, 2.22/xb, I assumed that the Fe atom in the metal has two kinds of 3d orbitals 2.22 atomic (contracted) orbitals, and 2.78 bonding 3d orbitals, which can hybridize with 4s and 4p to form bond orbitals. Thus 2.22 of the 8 outer electrons could occupy the atomic orbitals to provide the ferromagnetic moment, with the other 5.78 outer electrons forming 5.78 covalent bonds. 

Finally, synthetic metals made of polymeric organic molecules may also show the property of ferromagnetism. Organic materials of this kind were first demonstrated in 1987 by Ovchinnikov and his co-workers at the Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow. The polymer they used was based on a polydiacetylene backbone, which contains alternating double-single and triple-single bonds between the carbon atoms of the molecule (10.2). 

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