Answer to Question #265573 in General Chemistry for MSD

Question

What are the AO's participated for MO of HCl?

2px and 2pz

2pz of Cl and 1s of H

2pz of both Cl and H

None above

Answer 1

Molecular orbital theory involves solving (approximately) the Schrödinger equation for the electrons in a molecule. To review from Chapter 1, this is a differential equation in which the first and second terms on the right represent the kinetic and potential energies:

E \psi = -\frac{\hbar^{2}}{2\mu} \nabla^{2} \psi + V \psi

While the Schrödinger equation can be solved analytically for the hydrogen atom, the potential energy function V becomes more complicated - and the equation can then only be solved numerically - when there are many (mutually repulsive) electrons in a molecule. So as a first approximation we will assume that the s, p, d, f, etc. orbitals of the atoms that make up the molecule are good solutions to the Schrödinger equation. We can then allow these wavefunctions to interfere constructively and destructively as we bring the atoms together to make bonds. In this way, we use the atomic orbitals (AO) as our basis for constructing MO's.

LCAO-MO = linear combination of atomic orbitals. In physics, this is called this the tight binding approximation.