Molecular Geometry & Bonding
what the shape decides
The collection

Every essay — page 25

Page 25 of 42, continuing through the fields in the same order.

Orbitals Where the atoms go Bonding models What symmetry decides Beyond the octet What a spectrum settles When the molecule does not stop What the shape is for What is taught wrongly Series Named objects Orbitals Refutations Search

When the molecule does not stop

A chain of two hundred atoms is a molecule and behaves like a solid. Bands, gaps, metals, defects and surfaces, every one of them out of a finite matrix — and a clear account of what that route cannot reach.

What holds matter together, per pair. Four kinds of interaction between two units of matter, each computed from the model named beside it, on a logarithmic energy scale. The range from top to bottom is a factor of several hundred, which is the number behind why a molecular solid melts hundreds of degrees below a covalent one.

What holds a solid together

Four kinds of interaction between two units of matter, each computed from a stated model and put on one logarithmic scale. The ordering is not the one usually taught — an ion pair at contact beats a shared pair, which is a fact about the comparison rather than about the numbers.

4 figures What holds matter together, per pair. Four kinds of interaction between two units of matter, each computed from the model named beside it, on a logarithmic energy scale. The range from top to bottom is a factor of several hundred, which is the number behind why a molecular solid melts hundreds of degrees below a covalent one.

The lattice sum that depends on the order of adding

An ionic solid's binding is the sum of every pair of charges in it, and the series does not converge absolutely — rearranged, it gives a different answer. That is a genuine mathematical difficulty rather than a technicality, and it is the clearest example of something a real-space, neighbour-by-neighbour method cannot compute at all.

5 figures A gap where band theory says there cannot be one. The exact charge gap of a half-filled four-site ring against the on-site repulsion, with the one-electron gap of the same ring beneath it. The one-electron answer is zero at every U — the ring's half-filled shell is degenerate — while the exact gap reaches 5.99t.

The insulator band theory cannot see

A half-filled ring of four sites has a degenerate shell and no gap at all in the one-electron picture, which is the definition of a metal at that size. Its exact charge gap is zero when the electrons do not repel and grows without limit when they do — so a material can have a half-filled band and not conduct, and here is the number.

5 figures Two impurities at 2 to 14 sites apart. The splitting between the two levels a pair of impurities of strength -2β pulls out of a chain of 61, against how far apart they are, on a logarithmic scale. It falls by a constant factor per site of separation, and that factor is the decay of the isolated bound state computed from its energy alone. The two levels close on the single impurity's level as the pair separates.

Two defects, and the level between them

One impurity pulls a level out of a band at exactly −√(h²+4). Two of them pull out a pair, split by an amount that falls by a factor of 0.41421 for every site of separation — which is √2 − 1, predicted from the isolated level's energy alone and measured to six figures.

5 figures 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.

4 figures ⟨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 — and the binding each bond supplies, in the last column, obeys no such rule and falls as neighbours are added.

The bond that weakens as neighbours multiply

Wrapped structures with two, four and six neighbours per site give a mean of x² of exactly 2, 4 and 6. Their binding per site goes 1.272, 1.611, 1.979 — and their binding per bond falls from 0.636 to 0.330, which is why a metal atom with twelve neighbours has weak bonds and a great many of them.

6 figures 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.

9 figures Four fillings, four periods. four fillings of a ring of 120, and for each of them what a distortion of every available period is worth. Every period pays the same elastic cost, so the bars compare what the electrons give back and nothing else. The winner is one over the filling in every case.

The distortion the filling chooses

A half-filled chain of equal bonds is unstable and alternates — long, short, long, short. That is the case everyone is shown, and it is one case. Fill the chain a third of the way instead and the alternation is worthless: what wins is a pattern that repeats every three bonds, and the period is one over the filling at every filling tried.

8 figures A 6×5 patch with one site missing. A 6 by 5 patch of a square structure with one site removed, the two colours of the bipartite structure drawn differently. The disc areas show where the level at zero has its amplitude: entirely on one colour.

A vacancy is not an impurity

An impurity is a site whose energy has been changed, and everything about the level it produces depends on by how much. A vacancy is a site that is not there, and the levels it leaves sit at exactly zero for a reason that cannot be tuned, weakened or moved — the count of them is a difference between two numbers of atoms, and two vacancies do not split however far apart they are put.

8 figures One impurity is a level; many are a band. The impurity levels of a ring of 160 with sites of depth -3, drawn as a bar from the lowest to the highest, against the fraction of sites that are impurities. At the lowest concentration every level is at the same energy and the bar has no height at all. By 30 per cent the levels span 2.44 and have closed to within 0.25 of the host band, which is shaded.

One defect is a level, many are a band

A single deepened site in a chain pulls one state out of the band to −√(h² + 4), exactly, and holds it on 1.42 sites. Put in more and the levels spread: at one site in ten they span 1.45 in the same units and have closed to within 0.69 of the host band, and above one site in eight the count of levels stops matching the count of defects, because two defects on neighbouring sites push one of their pair back into the band.

7 figures 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.

5 figures 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.

8 figures