Polydentate Ligands

[Eden Breslauer-Friedman 2A]

Is there a trick for knowing how many bonds a polydentate ligand makes? What elements should we look out for in the chemical formula to begin thinking that it may be polydentate?

[Andrew Wang 1C]

I'm not too sure of this myself, but I think one way to do it is to see how many atoms in the ligand have lone pairs, and use that number to determine if it is bidentate, monodentate, etc. Also consider if the ligand can rotate or not (pi bonds), since double bonds may affect how many sites a metal can bind to.

[Massimo_Capozza_1G]

I'm also completely lost on this topic. Does anyone have a good video to help explain this concept?

[ellenulitsky Dis 1I]

This helped me a lot to understand the differences between the types of ligands. Hope this helps!

[Lisa Wang 3B]

Like the above post has illustrated in the picture, I think you would look for atoms that have lone pairs. For example, nitrogen and oxygen predominantly.

[Akshata Kapadne 2K]

I'm also completely lost on this topic. Does anyone have a good video to help explain this concept?

The Organic Chemistry Tutor on YouTube is a great resource to clarify concepts you might be confused on. If you search up polydentate ligands on YouTube, you should be able to find his video. Hopefully it provides some clarification.

[Brianna Chen 3F]

My two criteria include number of lone pairs (which I often noticed on Nitrogen atoms in the molecules we analyzed) and if spacer atoms (Carbon atoms) are present which allow the molecule to distort itself around the transition metal.

[Astha Patel 2J]

I would look for lone pairs on the lewis structure and then determine whether those pairs are in a favorable orientation, like with spacers. That's the only way to bind to the same central metal.

[kateraelDis1L]

I think of "lone pair, spacer, spacer, lone pair"