VB Theory for Transition Metal Complexes
This page presents exercises in VB diagrams for transition metal complexes. When the "New Question" button is pressed a description of the complex will be provided with sufficient information for you to distribute the metal and ligand electrons properly in the boxes provided. As you might expect, how the information is entered is critical.
- Start from the left and enter the metal electrons. If an orbital has a single electron, enter a "1", if it has two electrons, enter a "2".
- When entering the metal electrons, have all the filled orbitals before the half-filled. In principle, 221 is the same as 212, but the data is much more easily checked if a uniform format is followed.
- Once the metal electrons are entered, enter the appropriate number of ligand electron pairs, as "2"s.
- A Co3+ complex is octahedral and high spin
- Co3+ is d6. Since it's high spin, those electrons will distributed in the five d orbitals as follows 21111.
- Since it's octahedral, there are six ligand electron pairs. Those are added to the next six orbitals, the s, three p orbitals, and two d orbitals "222222"
- From left to right the orbital filling will be "21111222222"
- When you have the diagram complete, press "Check Answer".
- Pressing "Show Answer" will cause a solution to appear and you will no longer be able to submit an answer to that question.