Ligand Field Splitting

go to office hours

 

Physical Chemistry is a huge part of the reason i've left chemistry.

eeeeew.

I might (that's a big might) have been able to answer that about 4 years ago. Now PChem has been regulated to a part of my brain reserved for repressed memories and childhood embarassments.

i agree - go to office hours. or use a chemistry board to get homework help - SDN doesn't have that many pchem heads...

 

Try to find a pchem or inorganic chem book in the library. they'll go a little more in depth, but it might help.

 

You seem to have a grasp of it. I'm surprised you'd be covering this in gen chem. This seems much more suited to a Pchem or a quantum chem class. To answer your latter question, Ligand Field Theory evolved from Crystal Field Theory as it was combined with data arising from Molecular Orbital Theory.

 

This seems mostly right...

I just don't see how this is useful in the least bit for a Gchem class..

I guess it gives you an idea of MO theory and how electron orbital/filling nature can be variable. But honestly, I could've just told you that without this erudite example of crystal field theory.

Geez, what has become of GChem these days.

But if you get it and all, then good for you. I tutored Gchem for 3 years and most of the students had a hard enough time understanding gram to mole conversions...


jk... (but not really for some people)

 

My Gen Chem II class is covering this very topic right now. It's part of the coordination chemistry concepts. We're only expected to know the basics about it though and our teacher gave us a totem pole of sorts for the most common ligands on the strong-weak fields.

Sorry I can't be of more help, OP. We just started the unit, so I don't know much. It's just nice to know someone else is learning it too because none of the Gen Chem sections covered this last semester and very few are covering it this semester.

 

at least from what i remember from inorganic chemistry, crystal field theory was developed to consider metal ions in crystals, and thus is called crystal field theory, but it is also useful for molecular coordination compounds of transition metals.

ligand field theory uses molecular orbitals to consider a ligand environment of Lewis bases in an octahedron around a metal center.

 

You've got the gist of it..I assume since this is for Gen Chem that the simplified version you explained is adequate.

Ligand field theory uses molecular orbital theory to explain the splitting...which means it assumes there are actually bonds between the ligand and the metal, and uses a lot of math to explain the nature of those bonds. Crystal field theory basically just "looks" at the splitting through magnetics and spectrophotometry and classifies the states as high-spin or low-spin based on its diamagnetic or paramagnetic properties.