In: Chemistry
1. What is the spectrochemical series? Explain why cyano or phosphine ligands are placed high in the spectrochemical series but the hydroxide ligand or the halo ligands are quite low in the spectrochemical series?
2. what are the possible geometries for the six coordinate nickel (II) complexes in this experiment? Draw simple d-orbital ligand field energy diagrams to show the possibilities.
1. The spectrochemical series is the listing of ligands in the order of increasing field strength.
Because of the strong sigma (σ) bonding nature of the ligands such as cyano (CN-) or phosphine (PR3) ligands, they are considered as the strong field ligands, so they are placed high in the spectrochemical series, whereas the weak sigma (σ) bonding character of the hydroxide (OH-) and halo (X-) ligands, they are placed low in the spectrochemical series.
2. The possible geometries for the six coordinate nickel (II) complexes: octahedral (in presence of weak filed ligands) and distorted octahedral (in presence of strong field ligands).
In the case of Ni(II) complexes, the simple d-orbital splitting and different possible geometries can be drawn as shown below.