Lowest unoccupied molecular orbital free-electron model

H2, N2, or CO dissociates on a surface, we need to take two orbitals of the molecule into account, the highest occupied and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (the HOMO and LUMO of the so-called frontier orbital concept). Let us take a simple case to start with the molecule A2 with occupied bonding level a and unoccupied anti-bonding level a. We use jellium as the substrate metal and discuss the chemisorption of A2 in the resonant level model. What happens is that the two levels broaden because of the rather weak interaction with the free electron cloud of the metal. 

In the four-orbital model (1 ), low-lying ir-ir states of free-base porphyrins (symmetry D2h) are considered as resulting from single electron excitation from a pair of nondegenerate highest occupied molecular orbitals (bi, bo) to a pair of nondegenerate lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals (ci, cg). In the case of symmetry D2h mutually perpendicular electric transition dipoles X and Y are not equivalent and, therefore, in the visible absorption spectra of free-base porphyrins two different electronic bands Qx(0>0) and Qy(0,0) are observed (Table 1 and Fig. 10). 

The free-electron model can also be applied to the electronic spectrum of butadiene and other linear polyenes. The lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) in butadiene corresponds to the = 3 particle-in-a-box state. Neglecting electron-electron interaction, the longest-wavelength (lowest-energy) electronic transition should occur from n — 2, the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), as shown below ... 

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