Orbital Hybridisation

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. In chemistry, hybridisation (or hybridization) is the concept of mixing atomic orbitals to form new hybrid orbitals suitable for the qualitative description of atomic bonding properties. Hybridised orbitals are very useful in the explanation of the shape of molecular orbitals for molecules. It is an integral part of valence bond theory. Although sometimes taught together with the valence shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory, valence bond and hybridization are in fact not related to the VSEPR model. Chemist Linus Pauling first developed the hybridisation theory in order to explain the structure of molecules such as methane (CH4). This concept was developed for such simple chemical systems, but the approach was later applied more widely, and today it is considered an effective heuristic for rationalizing the structures of organic compounds.