“Hypervalency” and the chemical bond

Bonding in chemistry refers to the stability of molecules, therefore it is of paramount importance to natural sciences and certainly to all aspects of life. Yet bonding is a chameleon–like fuzzy concept, leaving enough space to the sprouting of a variety of “theories” supposedly explaining the structure and bonding of molecular systems. Admittedly some of these “theoretical ideas” played a constructive and useful role to the development of chemistry in the last one hundred years, however they are no longer needed. Intertwined with binding the hypervalency definition introduced half a century ago, started to be used not only for communication purposes as intended, but as an “explanation” of the structure and bonding. In the present communication and within the spirit of nonproliferation of redundant concepts, we have tried to prove that bonding between atoms can be understood and clarified based solely on the tenets of quantum mechanics as applied to molecules. More specifically the undisputable role of the excited state of atoms in the bonding process is emphatically projected. Clearly chemistry is an excited state rather than a ground state field.