This link is a great visual for cis and trans ligand substitution in a square planar complex.

A helpful model demonstrating inner sphere electron transfer can be found here.

The following resources contain additional information about d-orbital splitting:

1. This reference goes into more depth with high spin vs. low spin complexes, as well as strong vs. weak field ligands from the spectrochemical series.

Crabtree, R. H. The Organometallic Chemistry of the Transition Metals, 4th ed.; Wiley: Hoboken, NJ, 2005; pp 10-13.

2. This reference discusses strong and weak field ligands with respect to the pairing energy of electrons in the d-orbital.

Shriver; Atkins. Inorganic Chemistry, 4th ed.; Oxford University Press, 2005; pp 462-463.

3. This reference is a great resource for understanding how pi donor and pi acceptor ligands affect the split in d-orbital degeneracy, from a MO perspective.

Miessler, G. L.; Tarr, D. A.; Inorganic Chemistry, 4th ed.; Prentice Hall, pp 377-381.

More than 100 years ago, Alfred Werner first proposed the structure of coordination complexes in the mode that we still use today! The following papers discuss some of Werner’s many accomplishments and contributions to the field of transition metal complexes.

1. Werner’s intuition on coordination chemistry and current-day characterization on samples prepared by Werner and his lab are discussed in this report.
2. In this paper, a brief history on coordination chemistry from the 19th Century and Werner’s proposed structures are presented.
3. Crystallographic characterization of an original crystal prepared by Werner and his lab is shown here.

This site on chemguide gives examples and explains changes in solution color based on ligand identity around transition metal ions in complexes.

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/inorganic/complexions/colour.html

View the site in the link above or copy and paste the URL.

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Chemistry blog Compound Interest overviews the color of first row transition metal ions in aqueous solutions. A brief explaination is provided for what gives these complexes the colors we perceive.

http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/03/05/colours-of-transition-metal-ions-in-aqueous-solution/

View the picture and more in the link above or copy and paste the URL.

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There are a few free programs available that allow you to construct your own molecular models on your computer. This is very helpful for visualizing 3D structures, and can be helpful with visualizing symmetry operations.

Avogadro is available for Macs and PCs.

Chem3D is part of the ChemBioDraw Ultra package, for PCs only.

Review electron counting and do practice problems.

http://www.ilpi.com/organomet/electroncount.html

This website focusing on the “neutral ligand formalism” or MLX convention has some interesting case studies and introductory notes.

http://www.covalentbondclass.org

A large collection of rotatable, interactive structures. From small molecules to metallic or ionic solids, this collection may have the molecule you are trying to see in 3D.

http://www.chemtube3d.com

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