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Tetrahedral Complexes: D-Orbital Splitting For Tetrahedral Coordination

In a tetrahedral complex, four ligands are attached to the central metal at the alternate corners of a cube. This causes the d-orbitals to split into two sets with the t2g orbitals having a lower energy than the eg orbitals, which is the inverse of the splitting pattern in octahedral complexes. The splitting is also smaller for tetrahedral complexes compared to octahedral complexes due to poorer orbital overlap between the metal and ligand orbitals, resulting in tetrahedral complexes generally being high spin.

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772 views1 page

Tetrahedral Complexes: D-Orbital Splitting For Tetrahedral Coordination

In a tetrahedral complex, four ligands are attached to the central metal at the alternate corners of a cube. This causes the d-orbitals to split into two sets with the t2g orbitals having a lower energy than the eg orbitals, which is the inverse of the splitting pattern in octahedral complexes. The splitting is also smaller for tetrahedral complexes compared to octahedral complexes due to poorer orbital overlap between the metal and ligand orbitals, resulting in tetrahedral complexes generally being high spin.

Uploaded by

Afrah M
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Tetrahedral Complexes

d-Orbital splitting for tetrahedral coordination. A cube, an octahedron,


and a tetrahedron are related geometrically. Octahedral coordination results
when ligands are placed in the centers of cube faces. Tetrahedral
coordination results when ligands are placed on alternate corners of a cube.

In a tetrahedral complex, there are four ligands attached to the central

metal. These ligands do not point directly any of the d-orbitals of the

metal but more closer to t2g (dxy, dyz, dzx ) than e g orbitals and therefore get

repelled more than eg orbitals. It can simply be stated that the d orbital

splitting diagram in tetrahedral complexes is just inverse of octahedral

complexes.

The splitting of energy levels in a tetrahedral field is less compare to an


octahedral field of ligands due to the poor orbital overlap between the
metal and the ligand orbitals. Tetrahedral complexes are high spin
complexes as the energy gap between two sets of orbitals is roughly half of
octahedral complexes

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