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A Pair of Lonely Electrons in a Crowded Room: Revisiting the Concept of an Electron Lone-Pair

06-10 February 2023

University of Pretoria
South Africa
13:00 CET 08-Feb-23

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Dr. Jurgens de Lange

University of Pretoria, South Africa

Electron pairs are a ubiquitous concept in chemical bond theory: from covalent and non-covalent interactions to resonance and the Pauli Exclusion Principle, electron pairs from the cornerstone of electronic structure. In particular, electron lone-pairs play determining roles in describing geometric structure, reactivity and dative-covalent bonds. The concept of an atom-localized lone-pair, however, conflicts with the molecular-wide wave-nature of electrons, leading to the hypothesis that all lone-pairs are at least somewhat delocalized over multiple atoms. Unfortunately, exact quantification of the degree of lone-pair (de)localization is quite difficult.
Here, we apply the Fragment, Atomic, Localized, Delocalized and Interatomic (FALDI)1 density decomposition scheme to the quantification and visualization of lone-pairs. We show, in a series of model compounds (including primary amines, donor-acceptor compounds and organometallic bonds) that lone-pairs can be considerably more delocalized than what previous models might suggest. We discuss the nature of lone-pair delocalization and show that an intact lone-pair localized to an atom can couple to a lone-pair split amongst two atoms to increase its delocalization in a polarized fashion.

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Keywords: Electron delocalization, chemical bond theory, FALDI, theoretical chemistry

 


References

[1] - de Lange, J. H.; Cukrowski, I. J. Comp. Chem. 2018, 39, 1517–1530

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Financial Support

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is pleased to provide support for the 2024 VWSCC through a generous donation from Alan Fortier.

We thank Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) and CECAM for their support.