Diatomic molecules’ enigmatic constancy as the product of their dissociation energy and interatomic distance

Abstract

© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.In this contribution, we show that the product dissociation energy (D) × interatomic distance (R) with regards to a straightforward taxonomy of diatomic molecules comes to assume a relatively high and virtually constant value. It is so much so that the heavier the diatomic molecules at hand, the closer DxR approaches e 2 (where e is the elementary charge intensity in esu). This occurrence is studied herein separately under families arranged from chemically-alike diatomic molecules. Each family (such as the set made of ‘pairs of strictly alkali atoms’, or ‘pairs of strictly halogen atoms’, or ‘pairs of alkali-halogen atoms’, etc), is thus composed of diatomic molecules formed of atoms bearing similar electronic configurations; whereby we initially ended up dealing with 18 families in total. In addition to those, we brought together 10 more families of diatomic molecules each composed of heavy metal atoms belonging respectively to each of the ten columns drawn from the three rows of heavy metals under the Periodic Table, and observed an even better conformance. [Sc2, Y2, La2] is the first family in question; [Ti2, Zr2, Hf2] and [Va2, No2, Ta2] are the next two families; [Zn2, Cd2, Hg2] delineates the last family of heavy metal diatomic molecules of concern. Let us stress that each of these sets embodies diatomic molecules made of heavy metal atoms belonging to the given column of the Periodic Table; thus, bearing alike electronic configurations. We further brought together 5 more families made of heavy metal hydrides, oxides, chlorides, and alkalines. We were motivated to undertake the present research in the light of our insight with regards to (i) the general non-opacity character of neutral bodies vis-à-vis electrical field transmission, and thence (ii) the attractional electric property of neutral bodies–which underlines the disclosed constancy where, particularly for diatomic molecules comprising heavy atoms, the increase in DxR happens to get aligned with the increase in atomic weight 1 (A1) × atomic weight 2 (A2).