Chemistry › Section S · Transition metals and coordination chemistry › Topic S.3
Colour and magnetism in coordination compounds
The same chromium(III) ion makes a ruby red and an emerald green, and some complexes are pulled into a magnetic field while others are not. Crystal field theory explains both by looking at what ligands do to the energies of a metal's d orbitals.
In this topic
- Colour from a few electrons
- The crystal field idea
- Splitting in an octahedral field
- The spectrochemical series
- High spin and low spin
- Tetrahedral and square-planar fields
- Magnetism and unpaired electrons
- Worked example: counting unpaired electrons
- Why complexes are coloured
- Worked example: splitting from colour
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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