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MO bonding in F2 and O2

  • Page ID
    2001
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    Molecular orbitals (MO) are constructed from atomic orbitals. In O2 and F2, there is a crossover of the sigma and the pi ortbials: the relative energies of the sigma orbitals drop below that of the pi orbitals'. Information from the MO diagram justify O2's stability and show that it's bonding order is 2. The LUMO (lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) and HOMO (highest occupied molecular orbital) of difluoride's MO diagram help explain why the molecule is very stable - the diagram also tells us that the bond order is 1.

    Contributors and Attributions

    • Dieu Huynh

    MO bonding in F2 and O2 is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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