3.03 | Carbenes and Diatomic Ligands (CO, NO, CN, N2)

April 27th 2022 | In this lecture we will look in-depth at the two different types of carbenes (Fischer and Schrock). We will analyze their properties by looking at their MO-diagram, where we will discover the origin of their different electronic states (singles vs. triplet). We will also look that upon binding to metal centers, one of the carbenes is electrophilic, while the other one is nucleophilic. Finally, we will also investigate the MO diagram of the diatomic molecules CO, NO+, CN-, and N2. We will discuss how come that some of these bind strongly to metals centers while the others do not.

Finally, we will also start to look at the electron count of some of these ligands based on the “covalent model”, where ligands will be classified either as an X-type or L-type of ligand depending on the availability of their electrons.

The video to the lecture can be found below: