Wavefunction bonding

Z-matriccs arc commonly used as input to quantum mechanical ab initio and serai-empirical) calculations as they properly describe the spatial arrangement of the atoms of a molecule. Note that there is no explicit information on the connectivity present in the Z-matrix, as there is, c.g., in a connection table, but quantum mechanics derives the bonding and non-bonding intramolecular interactions from the molecular electronic wavefunction, starting from atomic wavefiinctions and a crude 3D structure. In contrast to that, most of the molecular mechanics packages require the initial molecular geometry as 3D Cartesian coordinates plus the connection table, as they have to assign appropriate force constants and potentials to each atom and each bond in order to relax and optimi-/e the molecular structure. Furthermore, Cartesian coordinates are preferable to internal coordinates if the spatial situations of ensembles of different molecules have to be compared. Of course, both representations are interconvertible. 

The additional terms in the molecular orbital wavefunction correspond to states with the two electrons in the same orbital, which endows ionic character to the bond The... 

One widely used valence bond theory is the generalised valence bond (GVB) method of Goddard and co-workers [Bobrowicz and Goddard 1977]. In the simple Heitler-London treatment of the hydrogen molecule the two orbitals are the non-orthogonal atomic orbitals on the two hydrogen atoms. In the GVB theory the analogous wavefunction is written ... 

Another approach is spin-coupled valence bond theory, which divides the electrons into two sets core electrons, which are described by doubly occupied orthogonal orbitals, and active electrons, which occupy singly occupied non-orthogonal orbitals. Both types of orbital are expressed in the usual way as a linear combination of basis functions. The overall wavefunction is completed by two spin fimctions one that describes the coupling of the spins of the core electrons and one that deals with the active electrons. The choice of spin function for these active electrons is a key component of the theory [Gerratt ef al. 1997]. One of the distinctive features of this theory is that a considerable amount of chemically significant electronic correlation is incorporated into the wavefunction, giving an accuracy comparable to CASSCF. An additional benefit is that the orbitals tend to be... 

T orbital for benzene obtained from spin-coupled valence bond theory. (Figure redrawn from Gerratt ], D L oer, P B Karadakov and M Raimondi 1997. Modem valence bond theory. Chemical Society Reviews 87 100.) figure also shows the two Kekule and three Dewar benzene forms which contribute to the overall wavefunction Kekuleform contributes approximately 40.5% and each Dewar form approximately 6.4%. 

We often refer to Heitler and London s method as the valence bond (VB) model. A comparison between the experimental and the valence bond potential energy curves shows excellent agreement at large 7 ab but poor quantitative agreement in the valence region (Table 4.3). The cause of this lies in the method itself the VB model starts from atomic wavefunctions and adds as a perturbation the fact that the electron clouds of the atoms are polarized when the molecule is formed. 

It is instructive to compare the simple LCAO and VB (valence bond) treatments, and especially to enquire why the LCAO treatment fails so disastrously at large R. It is easily shown that the LCAO wavefunction can be written... 

What happens when we have a many-electron wavefunction, such as the one below which relates to the simple valence-bond treatment of dihydrogen ... 

This turns out to be common behaviour for HF wavefunctions wherever strong bonds are made or broken, the HF wavefunction will tend to give incorrect dissociation products. 

In standard quantum-mechanical molecular structure calculations, we normally work with a set of nuclear-centred atomic orbitals Xi< Xi CTOs are a good choice for the if only because of the ease of integral evaluation. Procedures such as HF-LCAO then express the molecular electronic wavefunction in terms of these basis functions and at first sight the resulting HF-LCAO orbitals are delocalized over regions of molecules. It is often thought desirable to have a simple ab initio method that can correlate with chemical concepts such as bonds, lone pairs and inner shells. A theorem due to Fock (1930) enables one to transform the HF-LCAOs into localized orbitals that often have the desired spatial properties. 

This reactivity pattern can be rationalized in terms of a diabatic model which is based upon the principle of spin re-coupling in valence (VB) bond theory [86]. In this analysis the total wavefunction is represented as a combination of two electronic configurations arising from the reactant (reaction coordinate. At the outset of the reaction, is lower in energy than [Pg.141]

The VB and MO theories are both procedures for constructing approximations to the wavefunctions of electrons, but they construct these approximations in different ways. The language of valence-bond theory, in which the focus is on bonds between pairs of atoms, pervades the whole of organic chemistry, where chemists speak of o- and TT-bonds between particular pairs of atoms, hybridization, and resonance. However, molecular orbital theory, in which the focus is on electrons that spread throughout the nuclear framework and bind the entire collection of atoms together, has been developed far more extensively than valence-bond... 

The notation is the same as in Exercise 3.45.) Confirm that the bonding and antibonding orbitals are mutually orthogonal— that is, that the integral over the product of the two wavefunctions is zero. 

Table 1. The 72-atom model examined by different theoretical methods. The energy differences (AE in kcal/mol) are calculated with respect to the lowest SCF energy. q(Fe) stands for Mulliken population charges on the Fe atoms q(S) and SS(b.i.) are the Mulliken population charges and the bond index for the bridging S atoms, respectively AEq is the calculated Mossbauer quadrupole splitting constant [mm/sec]. The PUHF spin states are those projected from the UHF wavefunction with 5 = 5,. 

DOPED PA MODELS. We selected two criteria to characterize the structure of the mono- and di-cations. The wavefunctions of the cations at their respective optimized geometries were used to determine Mayer s bond indices which reflect the strength of the interatomic bonds. The differences in the cations and also the neutral molecule emerge very clearly from Table III. 

Therefore, it appears that the overall agreement obtained for a variety of spectroseopie eonstants is comparable for the two methods while the present method allows us to use a more compact wavefunction. It should also be noted that a good Cl description of a triple bonded system involving a third period atom is much harder to achieve. It can be concluded that the shape of the theoretical potential energy curve reflects its experimental counterpart with acceptable accuracy in the interatomic region of interest. 

---