Molecular Geometry & Bonding
what the shape decides
Concept

Density of states — where it appears

How many levels lie in each interval of energy, which is a histogram of a spectrum rather than a spectrum. Its shape is set by the dimension of the structure and decides how much binding a band of given width supplies.

Named by 17 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

Chains of 2, 4, 8, 16, 40: the levels crowd, the edges do not move. Every level of a chain of 2, 4, 8, 16, 40 sites, drawn at its computed energy on one axis. Adding sites adds levels inside a fixed interval rather than widening it, which is what makes the large system a band rather than a wider molecule.

A solid is a molecule that did not stop

Diagonalise a chain of two atoms, then four, then forty. Nothing new happens at any point, and by forty the levels are a band. The passage from molecule to solid is not a change of subject; it is the same matrix at a different size, and every step of it can be watched.

solids · Bands in a solid ⟨x²⟩ is the average number of neighbours. For each structure, the mean coordination counted off the edge list beside the mean of x² measured off the eigenvalues. They are equal by an identity about graphs, not by a limit — the full band width beside them obeys no such rule.

The width of a band is a count of neighbours

The mean of the squared level energies equals the average coordination — exactly, for any structure, with no limit taken and no periodicity assumed. It is the one statement in this field that is arithmetic rather than physics, and the usual textbook formula for band width is a special case of something weaker.

solids · Bands in a solid The density of states of a chain of 2000. The 2000 levels of a linear chain, binned into 34 intervals across the band, with the closed-form density drawn through them. The density piles up at both edges because that is where the level spacing turns over, and nothing periodic was assumed to get it.

A density of states is not a spectrum

A molecule's spectrum is a list of positions and a solid's is a shape, and the shape is not the density of states. Between the two sits everything the count leaves out — which transitions are allowed, how strongly, and from where to where.

solids · Bands in a solid Chains of 4, 16, 64, 160: the levels crowd, the edges do not move. Every level of a chain of 4, 16, 64, 160 sites, drawn at its computed energy on one axis. Adding sites adds levels inside a fixed interval rather than widening it, which is what makes the large system a band rather than a wider molecule.

A band with no structure in it

Everything in this field is computed from a finite matrix with no periodicity assumed, which is a real method and a real limitation. It produces a band and cannot produce a band structure — and the difference between those two words is worth an essay, because it is the boundary of what a finite matrix can honestly say.

solids · Bands in a solid How long a chain has to be before its ends stop mattering. The difference in energy per site between a ring and a chain of the same length, against that length. It falls as one over the length, which is what it means for the difference to be an end effect, and the size at which it drops below a thousandth of a β is printed.

Where a molecule stops being one

There is no size at which a molecule becomes a solid, and the useful question is a different one — how large must it be before a given property has stopped changing? The answers differ by a factor of several hundred between one property and the next, and every one of them is a measurement.

solids · Bands in a solid A half-filled ring's cheapest excitation goes to zero. The energy of the smallest available excitation of a half-filled ring, against the number of atoms, on log axes. Every doubling at least halves it, so in the limit there is no smallest excitation — which is what a metal is, before any band picture is drawn.

What a metal actually is

Not shiny, not a good conductor, not an element on the left of the table. A metal is a system with excitations of arbitrarily small energy, and that definition can be checked on a sequence of finite rings without drawing a band diagram or mentioning conduction at all.

solids · Metal The gap against size: uniform against δ = 0.15. The HOMO–LUMO gap of a half-filled chain plotted against the number of sites, on log axes, for a uniform chain and for one whose bonds alternate. The uniform sequence falls without limit; the alternating one settles at four times the alternation.

The gap is not the band width

Two numbers describe a band and they answer different questions. The width is set by how many neighbours an atom has; the gap is set by how unequal they are. A structure can have a wide band and no gap, a narrow band and a large one, and changing one leaves the other alone.

solids · Peierls distortion The state on a defect at site 31 of 60. The amplitude of one eigenvector at each site of a 60-site chain whose site 31 has its energy raised by 1.6β. The two colours are the two signs. A state belonging to the whole chain would reach across it; this one does not.

A defect is a level in the gap

Change one site's energy in a chain of a hundred and sixty and a level leaves the band, carrying a state that lives on a handful of atoms. In one dimension it happens for any change however small — the threshold measured on chains of forty, eighty and a hundred and sixty halves with every doubling, so there is no threshold at all.

solids · Defect A ring of 60: binding against filling. The occupied-level sum per site of a ring of 60, swept from an empty band to a full one. It rises to a maximum at half filling, falls symmetrically, and reaches exactly zero when every level is occupied. The thin curve is the closed form the finite sum approaches, and the second trace is the same sweep for the structure with ends.

Half filled is as bonded as it gets

Sweep a band from empty to full and the binding it supplies rises to a maximum at half filling and returns to exactly zero when every level is occupied. A completely filled band holds a solid together no more than a filled shell holds two helium atoms together, and for the same reason.

solids · Bands in a solid One band width, three shapes. three densities of states, each computed from a wrapped structure of 4,096 levels and drawn against the band scaled to run from −1 to +1. A chain piles its states into the two edges; a cubic structure piles them into the middle and thins to nothing at the edges.

Where the states pile up

Two bands of the same width can be entirely different objects. Scale a chain, a square net and a cubic structure to one width and what is left varies by a factor of four — a chain puts more than half its levels in the outer thirds of its band and a cubic structure puts more than half in the middle third — and that difference alone decides how strongly each of them binds.

solids · Bands in a solid The same neighbours, and a fifth of the binding between them. five structures in which every site has 4 neighbours. Their second moments are identical — 4 for every one, which is the coordination and is what the band width is read from. Their bindings per site are not: they run from 1.28 to 1.64, and the least bound is the one with the most four-step walks.

Two structures with the same neighbours

Five structures in which every atom has exactly four neighbours. Their second moments are 4.000 to nine decimal places, because that identity is the coordination and nothing else. Their bindings per site run from 1.2756 to 1.6363 — a spread of twenty-two per cent — and two of them that agree on the second, third and fourth moments together still differ in the third decimal place.

solids · Cohesion A band becomes a bell curve, and the dimension is the sample size. The normalised fourth moment of a wrapped hypercubic structure's density of states against its dimension, with the closed form 3 − 3/2d drawn through it. They agree to eight decimal places at every dimension from one to 6, and the reason is a limit theorem: a hypercubic spectrum is the sum of d independent one-dimensional ones, so its cumulants fall as powers of d exactly as a sum of independent samples does. The Gaussian value of three is approached and never reached.

A band becomes a bell curve

The normalised fourth moment of a hypercubic structure's density of states is 3 − 3/2d exactly, from one dimension to six, to eight decimal places — because the spectrum is a sum of d independent one-dimensional ones and the central limit theorem is what it is obeying. Reach further in one dimension instead and the shape overshoots a Gaussian rather than approaching it: a chain touching its third neighbour has a cubic structure's coordination and a fourth moment of 3.389 against 2.500.

solids · Bands in a solid How anisotropic a structure has to be. The fourth moment of a layered band, divided by the square of its second so that the width drops out, against the coupling between layers. The curve is the closed form that follows from adding cumulants — 3 − 3(2 + λ⁴)/(2(2 + λ²)²) — with nothing fitted; the points are eigenvalues. At λ = 1 it is the three-dimensional value 2.5 and at λ = 0 the two-dimensional 2.25, and it is halfway between them at λ = 0.47 — so the question of when a band is effectively two-dimensional has a number rather than an opinion.

Two bands, and the shape of each

A band's shape has a closed form when the structure it belongs to factorises. Put a second band beside it and the form survives exactly while the two do not talk, and fails as the square of the coupling once they do. Make one direction weaker instead and the form survives everywhere — 3 − 3(2 + λ⁴)/(2(2 + λ²)²), agreeing with eigenvalues to nine decimal places — so how anisotropic a structure has to be before its band is two-dimensional is a number: λ = 0.46518.

solids · Bands in a solid Where the two halves of an alloy come apart. The gap at the centre of a binary alloy's band against the contrast between its two components, for a chain of 2048 sites arranged three ways. The ordered arrangement's gap is exactly twice the contrast and opens at once; the segregated one's is exactly the contrast less the band width and opens at 2; and the random one, which has no closed form, opens a little before the segregated one and stays a little wider. Below the openings the curves sit at one level spacing rather than at zero, which is what a finite chain has instead of a gap.

Two bands, if the chain is short enough

Take a chain, raise half its sites and lower the other half, and ask when the band comes apart into two. The ordered arrangement splits at once, the segregated one at a contrast equal to the band width, and the random one splits earlier than either — and then closes again as the chain is made longer, because a long chain contains a long run of like atoms and a long run is a narrow sub-band.

solids · Defect Every arrangement, and the winner is not the one with the most unlike bonds. All 1820 ways of raising 4 of 16 sites on a wrapped square net, at a contrast of 4, each placed by its count of unlike bonds against the binding it gives. The best arrangement has 12 unlike bonds where 16 is available, and it binds at 1.103953 against 1.080031 for the best of those that do have the most. The count and the spectrum are two different orderings.

The arrangement a count cannot pick

Three arrangements of one composition came out ordered by their count of unlike bonds, which looked like a rule. Enumerating every arrangement instead of three shows it is not one: it holds at every composition on a square net at a small contrast, fails at four of them at a large contrast, and fails on a triangular net at any contrast at all.

solids · Cohesion Where the coupling overtakes the spacing. Two quantities that both depend on the chain length, for runs of 6. The coupling is the splitting of the closest pair of runs, which rises as the chain grows because a longer chain brings some pair closer together. The spacing is the mean separation of the gap levels in energy, which falls as the chain grows because there are more of them. They cross at 8,675 sites, and a set of levels coupled more strongly than they are spaced is a band.

The length at which levels become a band

Two runs of low sites share a state when they are close enough, and the splitting falls exponentially over two sites. A longer chain brings some pair closer while spreading its levels thinner, so the two quantities run against each other and cross — at about a thousand sites for runs of four and eighty thousand for runs of eight. Chains of four hundred sites are far below that, which is why every gap state on them is a box.

solids · Defect Two bands, square below, triangular above. The 128 levels of a structure carrying two orbitals on every one of its 64 sites, where the lower orbitals hop on a square net and the upper ones on a triangular net, separated by 12 and coupled at 0.06. The two bands have different widths and different shapes before anything mixes, which is the situation a single net cannot construct. Every level here is also reproduced by a two-by-two problem, one per mode, to 3e-13.

The constant that belonged to one net

Divide one second-order departure by another and the coupling cancels, leaving one constant times the gap — which reads as arithmetic. It was arithmetic about a square net. On a triangular one — the same graph for both bands, nothing else changed — the quotient drifts by a hundred and twenty-eight per cent.

solids · Bands in a solid

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Bands in a solidTight-binding modelsBand edgeEigenvalueThermodynamic limitBand widthSecond momentEnergy per siteGraphClosed formLevel spacingModel limit

All concepts