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Diatomic Nitrogen

Introduction:
Nitrogen exists as a highly stable gas and is a diatomic molecule that makes up much of the Earth's atmosphere.¹

The molecular orbital (MO) diagram for diatomic nitrogen is displayed below:

The molecular orbital diagram for nitrogen gas

MO 7 displays nitrogen's highest occupied molecular orbital. This is where two electrons reside in the ground state. Nitrogen's two 2pπ are degenerate (as seen in the molecular orbital diagram above), meaning that they exist at the same energy level.

MO 8 displays nitrogen's lowest unoccupied molecular orbital. When an electron is excited, it can leave its ground state orbital (2pπ) and often temporarily occupy this orbital which is in an antibonding configuration.

Nitrogen's bond length was calculated to be 1.1 Å. A DZV basis set provided an accurate bond length to literature values.² Because the molecule is linear, a bond angle of 180° is present between the two atoms. A triple bond exists between them as predicted by Lewis structure analysis and the molecular orbital diagram.

Nitrogen gas has no electrostatic potential, partial charge, or dipole moment. It is a symmetric molecule and the electrons are generally shared evenly between the atoms because they have the same electronegativity. However, a stretching vibration does exist.

1. PubChem; Bethesda, MD; Nitrogen Compound Summary; https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Nitrogen (accessed October 9, 2019).

2. House, J. E.; House, K. A. Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry, 3rd ed.; Academic Press: Cambridge, 2015; 13.1.

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