What is the difference between triplet oxygen and singlet oxygen?
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The singlet has only one possible arrangement of electron spins with a total quantum spin of 0, while the triplet has three possible arrangements of electron spins with a total quantum spin of 1, corresponding to three degenerate states.
Is singlet or triplet oxygen more stable?
In agreement with Hund’s rules, the triplet states are energetically more favorable, and correspond to the ground state of the molecule with a total electron spin of S = 1. Excitation to the S = 0 state results in much more reactive, metastable singlet oxygen.
Why is oxygen in a triplet state?

The first configuration has a multiplicity of 3 (hence termed triplet), and the other configurations have a multiplicity of 1 (hence termed singlet). Therefore, the ground state of atomic oxygen has two unpaired electrons (bi-radical), and is designated as 3P (“triplet P”) state.
What is quenching singlet oxygen?
The quenching of singlet oxygen occurs due to the deactivation of the excited state of molecule which is either physical (no oxygen consumption or product formation for example sodium azide and DABCO) or chemical type of quenching (for example quenching by carotene, ascorbate, thiols and histidine) which is further of …

Why is it called triplet state?
A triplet state is an electronic state in which two electrons in different molecular orbitals have parallel spins, as shown in Fig. 4.35. The name “triplet” reflects that there are three triplet sublevels as discussed earlier (see Section 4.15.
Is o2 a triplet?
The two unpaired oxygens each have a spin state of 1/2 for a total resultant spin S of 1, making ground state oxygen a triplet (2S+1) = 3.
What is singlet and triplet state?
Singlet state: All electrons in the molecule are spin paired. It is called a singlet because there is only one possible orientation in space. Triplet state: One set of electron spins is unpaired. It is called a triplet because there are three possible orientations in space with respect to the axis.
What is oxygen molecule called?
Oxygen molecule. Oxygen is normally found as a molecule. It is called dioxygen.
What is spin multiplicity of oxygen dimer?
It is be- cause of the presence of only two electrons in the two π* orbitals labelled 1πg that oxygen is paramagnetic with a triplet (the spin multiplicity “triplet” is given by 2S+1; here S, the total spin quantum number, is 0.5 + 0.5 = 1).
Why triplet state is more stable than singlet state explain?
Singlet states don’t split in spin-orbit coupling, and triplet states split into three levels in spin-orbit coupling. Just from Hund’s rule, we expect the triplet configuration to be lower in energy. That leads to a more stable electron configuration.
Why is triplet oxygen stable?
The triplet 3D is the lowest in energy because it has two unpaired electrons located in two different orbitals. The “exchange energy” makes it stabilize a bit.