Question

Explain the formation of hydrogen molecule with the help of potential energy curve.

OR 

Explain the formation of H₂ on the basis of VBT.

Answer 1

Formation of H₂ on the basis of VBT :

• Hydrogen atom has electronic configuration 1s¹. It contains one unpaired electron in its valence shell.
• When the two hydrogen atoms containing unpaired electrons with opposite spins are separated by a large distance, they can neither attract nor repel each other (there are no interactions between them). The energy of the system is the sum of the potential energies of the two atoms which is arbitrarily taken as zero.
• When the two atoms approach each other, attractive and repulsive forces begin to operate on them. Experimentally, it has been found that during formation of hydrogen molecule, the magnitude of the newly developed attractive forces contributes more than the newly developed repulsive forces. As a result, the potential energy of the system begins to decrease.
• As the atoms come closer to one another the energy of the system decreases. The overlap of the atomic orbitals increases only up to a certain distance between the two nuclei, where the attractive and repulsive forces balance each other and the system attains minimum energy. At this stage, a stable bond is formed between the two atoms.
• If the distance between the two atoms is decreased further, the repulsive forces exceed the attractive forces and the energy of the system increases and stability decreases.
• When two hydrogen atoms with electrons having parallel spin approach each other, the potential energy of the system increases and bond formation does not take place.