Electron configuration
The orbital arrangement of an atom's electrons. Negatively charged electrons are attracted to a positively charged nucleus to form an atom or ion. Although such bound electrons exhibit a high degree of quantum-mechanical wavelike behavior, there still remain particle aspects to their motion. Bound electrons occupy orbitals that are somewhat concentrated in spatial shells lying at different distances from the nucleus. As the set of electron energies allowed by quantum mechanics is discrete, so is the set of mean shell radii. Both these quantized physical quantities are primarily specified by integral values of the principal, or total, quantum number n. The full electron configuration of an atom is correlated with a set of values for all the quantum numbers of each and every electron. In addition to n, another important quantum number is l, an integer representing the orbital angular momentum of an electron in units of h/2π, where h is Planck's constant. The values 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 for n and 0, 1, 2, 3 for l together suffice to describe the electron configurations of all known normal atoms and ions, that is, those that have their lowest possible values of total electronic energy. The first seven shells are also given the letter designations K, L, M, N, O, P, and Q respectively. Electrons with l equal to 0, 1, 2, and 3 are designated s, p, d, and f, respectively. See Quantum mechanics, Quantum numbers
In any configuration the number of equivalent electrons (same n and l) is indicated by an integral exponent (not a quantum number) attached to the letters s, p, d, and f. According to the Pauli exclusion principle, the maximum is s2, p6, d10, and f14. See Exclusion principle
An electron configuration is categorized as having even or odd parity, according to whether the sum of p and f electrons is even or odd. Strong spectral lines result only from transitions between configurations of unlike parity. See Parity (quantum mechanics)
Insofar as they are known from spectroscopic investigations, the electron configurations characteristic of the normal or ground states of the first 103 chemical elements are shown in the table.
In the next-to-last column of the table, the spectral term of the energy level with lowest total electronic energy is shown. The main part of the term symbol is a capital letter, S, P, D, F, and so on, that represents the total electronic orbital angular momentum. Attached to this is a superior prefix, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, that indicates the multiplicity, and an anterior suffix, 0, 12, 1, 32, 2, 52, and so on, that shows the total angular momentum, or J value, of the atom in the given state. A sign ° above the J value signifies that the spectral term and electron configuration have odd parity.
The last column of the table presents the first ionization potential of the atom, the energy required to remove from an atom its least firmly bound electron and transform a neutral atom into a singly charged ion. See Atomic structure and spectra, Ionization potential
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