diborane,
B2H6, a colorless gas that bursts into flame on contact with air. The problem
is that diborane has only 12 valence electrons (three from each B atom, one from
each H atom); but, for a Lewis structure, it needs at least seven bonds, and therefore
14 electrons, to bind the eight atoms together! Diborane is an example of an
electron-deficient compound, a compound with too few valence electrons to be
assigned a valid Lewis structure. Valence-bond theory can account for the structures
of electron-deficient compounds in terms of resonance, but the explanation is
not straightforward.
The development of molecular orbital theory (MO theory) overcame these
difficulties. It explains why the electron pair is so important for bond formation
and predicts that oxygen is paramagnetic. It accommodates electron-deficient
compounds such as the boranes just as naturally as it deals with methane and
water. Furthermore, molecular orbital theory can be extended to account for the
structures and properties of metals and semiconductors. It can also be used to
account for the electronic spectra of molecules, which arise when an electron
makes a transition from an occupied molecular orbital to a vacant molecular
orbital.
The VB and MO theories are both procedures for constructing approximations
to the wavefunctions of electrons, but they construct these approximations in different
ways. The language of valence-bond theory, in which the focus is on bonds
localized between pairs of atoms, pervades the whole of organic chemistry, where
chemists speak of - and -bonds between particular pairs of atoms, hybridization,
and resonance. However, molecular orbital theory, in which the focus is on electrons
that are delocalized—spread throughout the nuclear framework and binding
the entire collection of atoms together—has been developed far more extensively
than valence-bond theory and is the procedure almost universally used in calculations
of molecular structures, like those described in Major Technique 5 following
Chapter 15.
Unlike Lewis’s theory, molecular orbital theory can account for the
paramagnetism of oxygen and the existence of electron-defi cient compounds.