ABSTRACT

Applying external electric fields to molecules gives rise to spectral shifting and splitting, a phenomenon known as the Stark effect. However, a fundamental question of how electronic structures of molecules are modified by electric fields is still not well understood. By applying electric fields to a carbon monoxide molecule, herein we have successfully addressed the fundamental question at orbital scales and discovered that the Stark effect exhibits anisotropic characters depending on the direction of the electric fields with respect to the molecular axis. Based on the fact that applying electric fields along the molecular axis always preserved the orthogonality between the sigma and pi electrons, we found that orbital resemblance-based cooperativity can only operate within either the sigma system in which sigma electrons somehow prefer to resemble each other or the pi electron system in which the 1π electrons experience polarization-based self-resemblance. However, switching the electric field vertical to the molecular axis breaks down the orthogonality between the sigma system and pi electron systems, opening up electronic channels that allow σ electron systems to resemble π electrons. Such orbital cooperativity represents a new physical effect beyond the conventional Stark effect. Moreover, we have found that applying electric fields to the molecule would modify its molecular orbital diagram, depending on the directions of the electric fields; the electric field along the carbon-to-oxygen direction basically retains the MO diagram of the free CO molecule, with noticeable intra-orbital electron redistributions, whereas the oxygen-to-carbon electric field does create new states of molecular orbital contributions.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT