On a Unified Potential Energy Function for Ionic and Non-ionic Bonds and the Question of Chemical Bonding

For 39 diatomic ionic and non-ionic molecules, the anomalous behaviour of the spectral parameters a e and wexe with respect to the bond type is reviewed. It is shown that on using a "universal" Sutherland parameter defined as A = ^kerc2/Dion, the anomalous behaviour disappears. Hard spectroscopic evidence is thus presented, for the first time to the author's knowledge, that just one bond type, in fact an ionic one, can account, in first approximation, for the spectral behaviour of both non-ionic and ionic bonds, H2 included.