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Benzene, with the delocalization of the electrons indicated by the circle. In chemistry, delocalized electrons are electrons in a molecule, ion or solid metal that are not associated with a single atom or a covalent bond. [1] The term delocalization is general and can have slightly different meanings in different fields:
Such electrons can therefore easily change from one energy state to a slightly different one. Thus, not only do they become delocalized, forming a sea of electrons permeating the structure, but they are also able to migrate through the structure when an external electrical field is applied, leading to electrical conductivity.
Metallic solids are held together by a high density of shared, delocalized electrons, resulting in metallic bonding. Classic examples are metals such as copper and aluminum, but some materials are metals in an electronic sense but have negligible metallic bonding in a mechanical or thermodynamic sense (see intermediate forms).
The Pauli exclusion principle limits the number of electrons in a single orbital to two, and the bands are filled beginning with the lowest energy. At the actual diamond crystal cell size denoted by a, two bands are formed, separated by a 5.5 eV band gap. Animation of band formation and how electrons fill them in a metal and an insulator
The bond results because the metal atoms become somewhat positively charged due to loss of their electrons while the electrons remain attracted to many atoms, without being part of any given atom. Metallic bonding may be seen as an extreme example of delocalization of electrons over a large system of covalent bonds, in which every atom ...
The presence of such bands allows electrons in metals to behave as if they were free or delocalized electrons. These electrons are not associated with specific atoms, so when an electric field is applied, they are free to move like a gas (called Fermi gas) [137] through the material much like free electrons.
The Drude model considers the metal to be formed of a collection of positively charged ions from which a number of "free electrons" were detached. These may be thought to be the valence electrons of the atoms that have become delocalized due to the electric field of the other atoms. [Ashcroft & Mermin 12]
[7] [8] The scattering of electrons has allowed us to understand many details about the atomic structure, from the ordering of atoms to that protons and neutrons are made up of the smaller elementary subatomic particles called quarks. [2] Electrons may be scattered through a solid in several ways: