Dentates

[Alyssa Parry Disc 1H]

How can you figure out whether or not a command is bidentate, tridentate, polydentate, etc.? Or do you just have to memorize them?

[Leanne Wong 1H]

You can figure out if a molecule is monodentate, bidentate, tridentate, etc if you just draw out the lewis dot structure and see where there are lone pairs on the central atom.

[Elizabeth Bamishaye 2I]

A monodentate ligand has one donor atom used to bond to the central atom or ion as they bind to the central atom or ion at one point. A bidentate ligand has 2 donor atoms used to bond to a central atom or ion at 2 points. A polydentate ligand is characterized by having more than 2 sites used to bond to a central atom or ion.

*Chelate ligand: a complex containing a ligand that forms a ring of atoms that includes the central metal atom; they bind to cations tightly.

[Rucha Kulkarni 2A]

Then do you count the number of lone pairs or just the number of atoms having lone pairs?
Like would H2O be monodentate or bidentate?

[Shannee Mak 3F]

You would focus on the atoms, not the number of electron pairs on each atom, as you determine if it's monodentate, bidentate etc by how many "sites" there are.

H2O is monodentate.

[Essly Mendoza 1J]

So if we're given the formula of a coordination compound, we must do the lewis structure in order to identify what type of ligand it is?

[Elizabeth Ignacio 1C]

Unless it's one of the more common coordination compounds where you're expected to know whether it's a bidentate etc, drawing out the Lewis diagram is the best thing to do to figure it out.