Acta Physica Sinica, Volume. 68, Issue 8, 080201-1(2019)

Determination of the symmetry of the highest occupied molecular orbitals of SF6

Rui-Qi Wu1, Ying-Chun Guo1、*, and Bing-Bing Wang2
Author Affiliations
  • 1School of Physics and Materials Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
  • 2Laboratory of Optical Physics, Beijing National Laboratory of Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
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    Quantum chemical calculation is an important method to investigate the molecular structures for multi-atom molecules. The determination of electronic configurations and the accurate description of the symmetry of molecular orbitals are critical for understanding molecular structures. For the molecules belonging to high symmetry group, in the quantum chemical calculation the sub-group is always adopted. Thus the symmetries of some electric states or some molecular orbitals, which belong to different types of representations of high symmetry group, may coincide in the sub-group presentations. Therefore, they cannot be distinguished directly from the sub-group results. In this paper, we provide a method to identify the symmetry of molecular orbitals from the theoretical sub-group results and use this method to determine the symmetry of the highest occupied molecular orbitals (HOMO) of the sulfur hexafluoride SF6 molecule as an example. Especially, as a good insulating material, an important greenhouse gas and a hyper-valent molecule with the high octahedral $ O_h $ symmetry, SF6 has received wide attention for both the fundamental scientific interest and practical industrial applications. Theoretical work shows that the electronic configuration of ground electronic state $ ^1{\rm A_{1g}} $ of SF6 is ${({\rm {core}})^{22}}{(4{\rm a_{1\rm g}})^2}{(3{{\rm t}_{1\rm u}})^6}{(2{{\rm e}_{\rm g}})^4}{(5{{\rm a}_{1\rm g}})^2}{(4{{\rm t}_{1\rm u}})^6}{(1{{\rm t}_{2\rm g}})^6}{(3{{\rm e}_{\rm g}})^4}{(1{{\rm t}_{2\rm u}})^6}{(5{{\rm t}_{1\rm u}})^6}{(1{{\rm t}_{1\rm g}})^6} $ and the symmetry of the HOMOs is $ T_{1g} $. However, in some literature, the symmetry of HOMOs of SF6 has been written as $ T_{2g} $ instead of $ T_{1g} $. The reason for this mistake lies in the fact that in the ab initial quantum chemical calculation used is the Abelian group $ D_{2h} $, which is the sub-group of $ O_h $

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    Rui-Qi Wu, Ying-Chun Guo, Bing-Bing Wang. Determination of the symmetry of the highest occupied molecular orbitals of SF6[J]. Acta Physica Sinica, 2019, 68(8): 080201-1

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    Paper Information

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    Received: Dec. 19, 2018

    Accepted: --

    Published Online: Oct. 29, 2019

    The Author Email:

    DOI:10.7498/aps.68.20182231

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