Trigonal bipyramidal or square pyramidal: Another ten minute exploration.
This is rather cranking the handle, but taking my previous post and altering the search definition of the crystal structure database from 4- to 5-coordinate metals, one gets the following.
Fe …
Co …
Ni …
Cu …
Trigonal bipyramidal coordination has angles of 90, 120 and 180°. Square pyramidal has no 120° angles, and the 180° angles might be somewhat reduced. Thus the Fe and Co series have plenty of 120, whereas the Ni and Cu series hardly any. The Ni series has many 160° values. It is clearly a serious issue that attempting any correlation with the spin states is going to be a lot of really hard work (I might next do another simple search where bond lengths can be shown to very closely correlate with low/medium/high spin states). I will not be trying a more finely grained analysis of the above plots; I just wanted to point out how very simple and quick they are to generate.
Acknowledgments
This post has been cross-posted in PDF format at Authorea.
I love experiments where the insight-to-time-taken ratio is high. This one pertains to exploring the coordination chemistry of the transition metal region of the periodic table; specifically the tetra-coordination of the series headed by Mn-Ni. Is the geometry tetrahedral, square planar, or other? One can get a statistical answer in about…
A word of explanation about this test page for experimenting with JSmol. Many moons ago I posted about how to include a generated 3D molecular model in a blog post, and have used that method on many posts here ever since. It relied on Java as the underlying software (first…
The topic of this post originates from a recent article which is attracting much attention.[cite]10.1038/s41586-019-1059-9[/cite] The technique uses confined light to both increase the spatial resolution by around three orders of magnitude and also to amplify the signal from individual molecules to the point it can be recorded. To me,…
This is by way of adding 7- and 8-coordination to the 4- and 5- previously covered. Since these higher co-ordinations are rarer, I have specified the central atom as any transition metal, and not a specific column of the periodic table.
First, 7-coordination. Note the hotspots at ~70, 110, 140, 160 and 180°.
And this is the 8-coordination, with hotspots at ~70° and its doubling, 140°.
In the other direction, 3-coordinate. Note the hotspot at trigonal, 120°, but prominent features at ~90/180° which are the T-shaped systems.
And finally, if you are wondering, comes 2-coordinate. With the expected hotspot at 180°, but with quite a tail, down to about 90°.
This is by way of adding 7- and 8-coordination to the 4- and 5- previously covered. Since these higher co-ordinations are rarer, I have specified the central atom as any transition metal, and not a specific column of the periodic table.
First, 7-coordination. Note the hotspots at ~70, 110, 140, 160 and 180°.
And this is the 8-coordination, with hotspots at ~70° and its doubling, 140°.
In the other direction, 3-coordinate. Note the hotspot at trigonal, 120°, but prominent features at ~90/180° which are the T-shaped systems.
And finally, if you are wondering, comes 2-coordinate. With the expected hotspot at 180°, but with quite a tail, down to about 90°.
