Polydentates

[Cristian Carrasco 1F]

Can someone explain how to determine whether a coordinated compound is mono,bi,tri dentate???

[Emily Glaser 1F]

The most basic way to think about it is that if it has an atom (usually N or O) that has a lone pair and SINGLE bond, it is a dentate

[Gobinder Pandher 3J]

Yeah Emily is right. My discussion's TA taught us that biological compounds with lone pairs (typically from N or O) would act as polydentates. However, he suggested that memorizing table 17.4 should suffice.

[juchung7]

My TA also pointed out that for a molecule with COO attached, only one oxygen will be a dentate. Since one of the oxygens is double bonded and has 2 lone pairs, and the other is single bonded, only the singled bonded oxygen will be a point of attachment, so don't count every oxygen all the time.

[Mary Becerra 2D]

One pattern I noticed was that the number of Nitrogens in a compound gave away whether it was mono, bi, etc. So 1 Nitrogen is mono, 2 Nitrogens is bi, etc. There may be acceptions but this is what I have noticed.