Crystal Field Theory: Tetrahedral Complexes - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems
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- In tetrahedral complexes, the ligand orbital interactions are strongest between the axes, affecting the dxy, dyz, and dxz orbitals.
- The dxy, dyz, and dxz orbitals have the highest energy due to strong interactions and are grouped at the top of the crystal field diagram as a triplet (t2g).
- The dx^2-y^2 and dz^2 orbitals, which lie along the axes, have less interaction and therefore lower energy, represented as a pair (e).
- The energy difference between these sets of orbitals is denoted as delta (Δ), the crystal field splitting energy.
- Tetrahedral complexes exhibit the smallest crystal field splitting energy (Δ) compared to octahedral and square planar complexes.
The crystal field splitting pattern for tetrahedral complexes has the d orbitals in between the axes as having the higher energy.
Video transcript
Example
Video transcript
Which one of the following complexes will have the smallest energy gap between the ESET and the T2 set of orbitals? So our energy gap Here they're just talking about Δ which is our crystal field energy, here splitting energy, and they want the smallest one that happens with tetrahedral complexes.
To be a tetrahedral complex you need to have a metal cation connected to four ligands or have a metal connected to four ligands. If we take a look here, the only one that has a metal connected to four ligands is option D. In it we have copper 2 plus connected to four bromide ions.
The other ones don't work because in the first one we have 6 ligands, so that would be octahedral. We have OX 3 is not. We don't even need to worry about if it's monodentate, bidentate, polydentate 3. Here we need 4 ligands. EDTA. Here we're only showing one. But EDTA, remember is a polydentate ligand, so it has six donor atoms.
The only one that fits the great description of having four ligands or 4 donor atoms is option D. This will result in the smallest energy gap.
For which of the following complexes, the energies of the dx2−y2 and dz2 orbitals will be lower than the other three d orbitals?