NSCI 1322 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Ethylenediamine, Lone Pair, Coordination Complex
12 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
A metal atom, particularly a transition-metal atom, often functions in chemical reactions as a lewis acid, accepting electron pairs from molecules or ions. A complex ion is a metal ion with lewis bases attached to it through coordinate covalent bonds. A complex (or coordination compound) is a compound consisting either of complex ions and other ions of opposite charge. Ligands are the lewis bases attached to the metal atom in a complex. They are electron-pair donors, so ligands may be neutral molecules or anions that have at least one atom with a lone pair of electrons. You might expect this, because an electron pair on a cation is held securely by the positive charge, so it would not be involved in coordinate bonding. The coordination number of a metal atom in a complex is the total number of bonds the metal atom forms with ligands.
