Orbital disproportionation and spin crossover as a pseudo Jahn-Teller effect

Abstract

It is shown that in systems with electronic half-closed-shell configurations of degenerate orbitals, e(2) and t(3) (which have totally symmetric charge distribution), ground state distortions from high-symmetry geometries may occur due to a strong pseudo Jahn-Teller effect (PJTE) in the excited states, resulting also in a novel phenomenon of PJT-induced spin crossover. There is no JTE neither in the ground state term nor in the excited terms (including degenerate terms) of these configurations but a strong PJT mixing between two excited states [((1)E+(1)A) [cross-filled circle] e and ((2)T(1)+(2)T(2)) [cross-filled circle] e in the e(2) and t(3) cases, respectively] pushes down the lower term to cross the ground state of the undistorted system and to form the global minimum with a distorted geometry. The analysis of the electronic structure of this distorted configuration shows that it is accompanied by orbital disproportionation: instead of proportional population of all degenerate orbitals by one electron each (as in the ground state of the undistorted system that follows Hund's rule), two electrons with opposite spins occupy one orbital, resulting in transformations of the type (e(theta);e(epsilon))-->(e(theta)e(theta)) for e(2) and (t(x);t(y);t(z))-->(t(x);t(x);t(z)) for t(3) systems. Since the two geometry configurations, undistorted and distorted, appertain to different electronic terms that have different spin states, the formation of the global minimum with the distorted configuration is accompanied by a spin crossover. Distinguished from the known spin-crossover phenomenon in some transition metal compounds, the two states with different spin in the PJT-induced spin crossover have also different nuclear configurations, undistorted and distorted, that coexist with a relatively small energy difference. The change of configuration reduces significantly the rate of relaxation between the two states; the relaxation is further reduced by the lower spin-orbital coupling in the light-atom systems as compared with transition metal compounds. This means that there may be systems for which the switch between the two states (in both directions) under perturbations may be observed as a single-molecule phenomenon. Systems with half-closed-shell electronic configurations e(2) and t(3) are available in a variety of molecules from different classes, organic and inorganic; the theory is illustrated here by ab initio calculations for a series of molecular systems, including Si(3), Si(3)C, CuF(3), Na(3), Si(4), Na(4), Na(4) (-), and C(60) (3-), which are in agreement with the experimental data available.