ELECTRONEGATIVITY, HARDNESS, AND A SEMIEMPIRICAL DENSITY-FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF CHEMICAL-BINDING

Chemical binding is modeled through interatomic charge transfer and accumulation of electron density at the bond center using the concepts of electronegativity and hardness parameters defined for the bond region. The generalized electronegativity and hardness parameters for the up- and down-spin electrons are also defined within the framework of spin-polarized density functional theory, leading to the formulation of covalent binding in molecules in terms of a two-way flow of unpaired electrons between the atoms. The associated energy changes corresponding to these descriptions are shown to provide quite accurate predictions of bond energies for simple heteronuclear diatomic molecules. (C) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.