Valence Bond Structure Weights Are Not Merely Mathematical Manifestations of the Wavefunction !

What is it about?

Obtaining insights about Bronsted acidity, especially relative Bronsted acidity, among the plethora of possible protic ionic liquids is an important aspect for understanding utility of protic ionic liquids as acid catalysts and conducting electrolytes for use in fuel cells and many other applications. Present work calculates relative acidity among a closely related group of representative protic ammonium ionic liquids. For doing this it makes use of recently revitalized modern ab initio valence bond theory. Valence bond theory approximates a molecular wavefunction as a linear combination of possible valence bond structures. These valence bond structure are nothing but Lewis structures depicting different bonding schemes in a molecule. The structures include covalently bonded Lewis structures formed as a result of electron pair sharing between two bonding atoms in the molecule or ionically bonded Lewis structure in which one of the bonding atoms loses its electron completely to the other bonding partner atom so as to give rise to electrostatically bonded ionic partners.

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