270120 VO Coordination Chemistry (2012W)

1. Ions with one electron; wavefunctions; radial and angular functions; angular momentum; angular functions. 2. Ions with more than one electron; the self-consistent field approximation; electronic configurations; coupling of orbital angular momenta; coupling of spin angular momenta; spin-orbital coupling; equivalent and non-equivalent electrons; relation between electron configurations and terms; terms for equivalent electrons; Hund's rules; interpretation of Hund's rules; inter-electron repulsion parameters; spin-orbital coupling parameters. 3. Symmetry. Introduction: rotation axes, reflection planes, centre of inversion, improper rotation axes, successive operations, identity, inverse and class; point groups. 4. Definition of a group; examples; properties of a group; representations and bases; matrices as representations; matrix representations of molecular symmetry; reducible representations and irreducible representations; characters; character tables, irreducible representations and Mulliken symbols; the reduction formula; Schrödinger equation and group theory; molecular vibrations; internal coordinates; projection operators; spectroscopy and symmetry selection rules. 5. Level- and term splitting in a chemical environment; 6. Electrostatic (crystal field) theory of orbital splitting; electrostatic energy level diagrams and the spectra of octahedral complexes; Limitations of simple crystal field theory; ligand-field theory; weak, intermediate, and strong ligand fields; intermediate fields; I - The weak field method; configuration interaction; Orgel diagrams; Intermediate fields; II - The strong field method; the method of descending symmetry; Tanabe-Sugano diagrams; use of Tanabe-Sugano diagrams in the interpretation of the spectra of octahedral complexes.