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A perimeter model for the x electrons of C, is developed and implemented within the independent particle approximation.
Physically, the model gives the energy levels of a particle on a sphere perturbed by the icosahedral potential set up by the 60
carbon atomic cores. Computational techniques are adapted from well known crystal field formalisms. The molecular orbitals are
represented by linear combinations of spherical harmonics. One or two adjustable parameters are used to give reasonable agree-
ment with the observed UV-visible spectrum and with semi-empirical and ab initio calculations at a similar level of approxima-
tion. A closed-shell ground state, appreciable HOMO-LUMO gap, and electric dipole forbidden HOMO-LUMO transition are
predicted.
e 0
r* 7 (1)
particle on a sphere [2-4,7-g 1. We present here an
elaboration of this idea, in which the K electrons are where m, is the mass of the electron and r. is the ra-
treated as independent particles sliding on the sur- dius of the sphere. When the levels are filled with the
face of a sphere onto which is impressed an icosa- 60 n electrons of C,, the HOMO and LUMO cor-
hedral potential generated by point charges at the respond to levels 1=5 and 6, respectively. Given a
carbon atomic positions. The present treatment is radius of 3.5 1 8, [ 131, the first allowed transition
restricted to this conceptually simple case and ig- predicted by this model is at 3.7 1 eV, in remarkable
nores electron correlation. The predictions are there- agreement with experiments that suggest 3.0-3.8 eV
fore limited to results at the orbital level of [ 14,151.
approximation. The unperturbed model gives many unrealistic
The concept of idealizing structures in this way was predictions however, such as an open-shell ground
200 0009-2614/93/t 06.00 0 1993 Blscvier Science Publishers B.V. AII rights reserved.
Volume 205, number 2,3 CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS 9 April 1993
state and 1 l-fold degenerate HOMO. These prob- ficients can be determined solely from the group the-
lems are addressed by replacing the spherical poten- oretical arguments, but the high symmetry of C&
tial with an icosahedral potential, which is generated makes this technique extremely tedious. An alter-
by the carbon atomic cores. This potential breaks the nate approach is to write the coefficients as expan-
degeneracies of ah levels with 12 3. Simple group sions of spherical harmonics via the so-called mul-
theory gives all the splitting patterns and shows that tipole expansion theorem [ 161
under the point group Ih the l= 5 level splits into three
sets of orbitals, h,, t rU, and tzu, with degeneracies of
5, 3, and 3, respectively. The closed-shell ground state
can be accounted for by assuming the h, orbitals lie where Ze is the effective charge on each carbon
lowest of these, however one does not know a priori atomic core and 0, and @iare the angular coordinates
the ordering of the orbitals or magnitude of the split- of the carbon atomic cores.
tings. These properties can be readily calculated us- Eq. (2 ) is rigorously correct only when the sum-
ing a crystal field formalism. mation over I extends from zero to infinity, however,
the summation can be truncated without affecting
the matrix of the Hamiltonian in the region of in-
2. Crystal field treatment terest. First, the I=0 term can be neglected since it
represents the purely spherical component of the PO-
The purely Coulombic icosahedral potential is tential and gives rise to no splittings. Second, terms
written as an expansion in spherical harmonics about in the potential for which the relationship
the center of the sphere in a manner commonly em-
ployed in crystal field calculations via the following Ir,-P]a191+I (5)
well-known expansion theorem [ 161:
does not hold integrate to zero (vector triangle
rule) and can be omitted.
The matrix elements can be written as
201
Volume 205, number 2,3 CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS 9 April 1993
Whereas a typical crystal field Hamiltonian matrix in almost all cases one can quickly establish whether
contains 25 or perhaps 49 elements (for d or f or- a given transition is allowed or forbidden simply by
bitals, respectively), this matrix requires 50625 ele- inspecting the parentage of the orbit& involved. The
ments. Thus the group theoretical constraints are in- only exception is 2t,,t I&, which is forbidden on
valuable because they show that only a small fraction the basis of other symmetry considerations (this ex-
of the elements are non-zero and require evaluation. citation does not give rise to a T,, state, which is the
Taken together, the group theoretical constraints on only allowed one-photon excitation from the ground
I and m cause 90% of the matrix elements to vanish, state). Calculated oscillator strengths agree with these
greatly reducing the computational burden. observations. In addition, fig. lb shows the orbitals
The parameter Ze, the effective charge on the car- separating into two bands as the effective charge
bon core, is not known a priori and must be fitted grows. The lower levels are stabilized by the per-
based on experimental results. In addition, a two-pa- turbing potential, while the upper levels are desta-
rameter fit can be obtained by replacing the electron bilized by it.
mass in the kinetic part (eq. ( 1) ) with an effective A consequence of the strong coupling between
electron mass, as is commonly done in solid-state states described in section 2 is the region near the
calculations to account for complications imposed HOMO was observed to change as the number of an-
by a periodic potential function. gular momentum states in the matrix increased.
The calculations were performed on a SGI 4D/360 Given the high symmetry, it is necessary to include
computer. Matrix elements can be evaluated by a va- states of very high angular momentum to be sure that
riety of methods including Wigner 3-j symbols [ 17 1, a representative sample of each symmetry species has
exact integration via a symbolic computation lan- been obtained. A conspicuous example is the to or-
guage, Maple V #I, or numerical integration using bital set of the I= 8 manifold ( 1tze). It is the first of
Gaussian quadrature. The carbon nuclei positions its species to appear and so interacts with nothing
were determined using ro=3.5 12 A, short bond below itself. When one other tzg orbital is introduced
length=1.388 A, and long bond lengthc1.433 A by extending the calculation to include I= 10 ( 2tz,),
[ 13 1. The largest matrix included levels up to I = 14, the interaction is so strong that It, drops rapidly,
requiring terms to I= 28 in the potential expansion. crossing the HOMO at an effective charge of 1.1 (fig.
lb). The diagram continues to change as higher lev-
els are introduced, but becomes invariant when 14
3. Results and discussion levels are included in the matrix.
The behavior of ltt seems somewhat disconcert-
Plots of orbital energies versus the effective charge ing at first; there are nine orbitals which are the first
(Ze) are shown in fig. 1. The electron mass is taken of their respective species to appear, yet It, drops
as the actual electron rest mass and the lowest-energy quite precipitously compared to the other eight. Braga
level is taken as the zero of energy with all other lev- et al. [ 8,9] calculate the energy of this orbital at about
els plotted relative to it. 2.7 eV above the LUMO, which corresponds to about
The HOMO is shown as the heavy line in the I = 5 Z=O.8 in fig. lb. They label it 2t2*, from which we
manifold of fig. la. The left side of the figure rep- infer there is an orbital with t4 symmetry in the o
resents the physically unreasonable case of a nega- set, which presumably prevents it from dropping even
tive effective core potential, and the ground state further.
prediction is an open-shell tk configuration. When To better understand the behavior of 1tt it is nec-
Z is positive, the diagram predicts a closed-shell essary to inspect the molecular orbitals themselves.
ground state configuration, hA, in agreement with We show in fig. 2 a plot of electron density for the
other calculations [ 2-91. The HOMO-LUMO tran- sum of the three degenerate eigenstates that make up
sition is a forbidden intraterm transition within the It,. Under a weak perturbation (low effective
I= 5 manifold for values of Z less than one. In fact, charge), the electrons are distributed primarily in the
pentagons and the centers of the hexagons. As the
# WaterlooMaple Software, University of Waterloo. charge is increased they move rapidly to the carbon
202
Volume 205, number 2.3 CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS 9 April 1993
I I I I I
-1 .o -0.5 0.0 0.5 1 .o
Effective Charge
(4
0.5 1 .o
(b) O. Effective Chat-
Fig. 1. Orbital energies as a function of the effective charge on each carbon atom experienced by an electron moving on the surface of
Csa The heavy line in part (a) is the HOMO. The zero of energy is taken as the lowest energy level at any given effective charge.
atomic core positions. The highly noded character of tential stabilization which dominates the kinetic term
the orbitals indicates it originates in a high angular and lowers the energy dramatically.
momentum state, but the situation of the anti-nodes Spectral assignments by Leach et al. [ 141 were used
precisely at the atomic core positions results in a po- for fitting the parameters Z and men. Table 1 gives
203
Volume 205, number 2,3 CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS 9 April 1993
Table 1
Allowed transitions in Cso: ohserved and calculated energies
) Ref. [ 141.
204
Volume 205, number 2,3 CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS 9 April 1993
(a] (b]
1=4
== hs
gs
HOHO h
t&l 1=4 ._
81
1=3 ,,5 g. h.
l=3 _== &
I=2 _- ha to
tru 1=2 __
1=I / ha
I=! __ hl
-- --
1=0 a, 1=0 %
Fig. 3. Orbital diagrams for (a) one-parameter tit at Z=O.88 and (b) two-parameter tit at Z=O.30 and w= L4m,.
205
Volume 205, number 2,3 CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS 9 April 1993
[8] M. Braga, S. Larsson, A. Rosen and A. Volosov, Astron. [ 151 H. Asie, M.M. Alvarez, S.J. Anz, R.D. Beck, F. Diederich,
Astrophys. 245 ( 199 1) 232. K Fostiropoulos, D.R. HutTman, W. Rr&chmer, Y. Rubin,
[9] M. Braga, A. Rosen and S. Larsson, 2. Phys. D 19 (1991) ICE. Schriver, D. Sensharma and R.L. Whetten, J. Phys.
435. Chem. 94 (1990) 8630.
[ 161 M. Gerloch and R.C. Slade, Ligand field parameters
[IO] J.R. Platt, J. Chem. Phys. 17 (1949) 484.
(Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973).
[ Ill K. Ruedenbcrg and C.W. Scherr, J. Chem. Phys. 21 ( 1953)
[ 171 E.P. Wigner, Group theory and its application to the
1565. quantum mechanics of atomic spectra (Academic Press,
[ 121 C.W. Scherr, J. Chem. Phys. 21 (1953) 1582. New York, 1959).
[ 131 J.M. Hawkins, A. Meyer, T.A. Lewis, S. Loren and F.J.
Hollander, Science 252 ( 199 I ) 3 12.
[ 141 S. Leach, M. Vervloet, A. Despres, E. Breheret, J.P. Hare,
T.J. Dennis, H.W. Kroto, R. Taylor and D.R.M. Walton,
Chem. Phys. 160 ( 1992) 45 1.
206