How do I know which transition metal complex is most stable?

1 Answer
Jul 29, 2017

"How do you compare apples and oranges.......?"

Explanation:

I take it, and I fully accept that I may be wrong, that your question relates to ligand field theory, and the electronic configuration of a transition metal ion in an octahedral coordination complex......

You know that that when a transition metal ion is in octahedral coordination, the ligand field strongly differentiates between axial and non-axial "d-orbitals". For octahedral coordination, this occurs for d^4, d^5, d^6, and d^7 metal ions, which can generate low spin (differentiation between t_"2g" and e_g is large), and high spin (differentiation between t_"2g" and e_g is small) complexes.

Half-filled d-orbitals, d^5, and fully-filled d-orbital configurations, d^10, tend to have a special stability, but for each scenario it is hard to find a metric with which to make meaningful comparison.