Transition metal oxo complexes

Publisher Summary This chapter provides a critical review of the preparation, characterization (which is often incomplete), and properties of cyanide complexes of the transition metals. It focuses on structural, thermodynamic, and kinetic data. Two prominent features of transition metal cyanide chemistry are the wide range of metal:ligand ratios in complexes and the existence of many metals in low oxidation states. The chapter discusses the bearing of the physical state of metal cyanides on structural investigations. There are two important consequences of the fact that cyanide is an ion and not a neutral molecule: metal cyanides and their complexes are nonvolatile salts rather than volatile molecular entities and much of their chemistry is concerned with processes and measurements in solution in solvents of high complexing power, so that differences in complexing by solvent and ligand are involved. The chapter considers the effect of cyanide on the stabilities with respect to oxidation and reduction of metal ions in aqueous media, taking Fe(II) and Fe(III) as an example.

G. Wilkinson

Papers

427. A nitrido- and other complex cyanides of rhenium-(V) and -(VI)