Use of Soft X-Ray Band Spectra for Determining Molecular Orbital Structure. I. Vanadium Octahedral and Tetrahedral Sites

Abstract

A molecular orbital model is used as the basis for interpreting the metal ion K and L_ii,iii, x-ray spectra and the oxygen K spectra for both octahedral and tetrahedral vanadium–oxygen compounds Specific electronic transitions are assigned to each intensity maximum in both emission and absorption spectra. It is shown that by combining the information contained in all the spectra a complete molecular-orbital (MO) energy level diagram can be empirically deduced for each compound. Individual MO's can be accurately placed with respect to each other making the x-ray technique a most powerful experimental tool for probing the electronic structure of simple compounds.