This page serves as a short introduction to MO Theory. In-depth explanations of the concepts and applications can be found by clicking on their respective links in the sidebar on the left, located under the heading “Categories”. Once you have understood the contents of this page, you will be able to progress forward to the next few stages of this learning journey 🙂
To start you off on your journey, please watch the short video on MO below:
As seen from the video, MO theory explains bond formation in terms of the overlap of orbitals. Below are some basic concepts that you should know before learning MO theory.
Concepts you should already know
In order to understand MO theory, there are a few concepts that you should already be familiar with:
- Atoms have orbitals where electrons occupy
- Covalent bonds are formed by sharing of electrons between two atoms
- Atoms aim to obtain the stable octet configuration, however if an energetically-accessible, vacant d orbital is present, an atom can expand its octet
- Lower energy orbitals are more energetically stable and are thus filled first
Definitions
- Paramagnetism: magnetic state of an atom with one or more unpaired electrons. The unpaired electrons are attracted by a magnetic field due to the electrons’ magnetic dipole moments.
- Diamagnetic: substances have paired electrons of opposite spin
- Nodes: plane where there is zero percentage chance of finding an electron
- Bond order: number of chemical bonds between a pair of atoms, it is proportional to bond strength, inversely proportionate to bond length
Now you’re all set and ready to move on! We hope that you will have a pleasant time learning from us 🙂