Polydentates

[Alison Le 2E]

Hi! How can we determine how what type of dentate a ligand is (ex: bidentate, tridentate, etc.)? I saw that we should draw the structure, but how can we tell from the structure? Thanks!

[Chem_Mod]

You can tell based on the structure by the number of lone pairs able to bind as well as the conformation (bond types, ets.) that may restrict the movement of the molecule and make it, in terms of steric hinderance, difficult to bind multiple times.