4.02 | Metal Ligand Bonding

Sunday May 8th 2022 | In this last and shortened lecture the bonding of ligands to metal complexes will be discussed. We will start with a simple inorganic molecule; the hexafluorophosphate anion (PF6-) and discover how by introducing d-orbitals the classical bonding in octahedral metal complexes can be discussed. After establishing the general bonding scheme in octahedral complexes, we will look at the influence of pi-donors and pi-acceptor ligands on the MO diagram and how theses changes correlate to the spectrochemical series. Finally, we realize that if we understand one MO diagram in a series (e.g. of tetragonal symmetry) all the other MO diagrams (e.g., octahedral, square pyramidal, and square planar) can de deduced.

The link to the video can be found below: