Why are bonding orbitals more stable?
1 Answer
Bonding orbitals minimize the nuclear repulsion energy.
Let us consider the following equation which describes the energy of a quantum mechanical system via the Particle-in-a-Box model for the helium atom:
The first two terms indicate kinetic energy. Let's ignore that since that is not our focus.
The 1-electron terms describe the coulombic attractions of each individual electron to the nucleus of the atom, whereas the 2-electron term describes the coulombic repulsions between the pairwise electron interactions in the atom. (Note: this term is why solving for the exact ground-state energy of helium is impossible)
You can tell from the equation that to maintain the equality, if the third and/or fourth term increases, the sixth term decreases (if it changes), and if the third and/or fourth term decreases, the sixth term increases (if it changes). The fifth term changes randomly.
Using the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation, the nuclei stay still, and so if the electrons move, interactions between the electrons change (2-electron term) and interactions between the nucleus and electron changes (1-electron terms).
The point is, the more nuclear repulsion, the higher in energy the molecular orbital is.
Bonding orbitals minimize the nuclear repulsion energy.