electron pair
Sign in to saveAlso known as Lewis pair, paired electrons
two electrons that occupy the same orbital but have opposite spins
Wikidata facts
- Has part
- electron
- Image
- MO-covalent and polar bonds.svg
Show 3 more facts
- different from
- lone pair
- does not have part
- unpaired electron
- has characteristic
- opposition
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
In chemistry, an electron pair or Lewis pair consists of two electrons that occupy the same atomic or molecular orbital but have opposite spins. Gilbert N. Lewis introduced the concepts of both the electron pair and the covalent bond in a landmark paper he published in 1916.
MO diagrams depicting covalent (left) and polar covalent (right) bonding in a diatomic molecule. In both cases a bond is created by the formation of an electron pair.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “electron pair” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.