Abstract

Enos Masheija Kiremire*

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/ojc/310133

The shapes of conventional covalent compounds of main group elements and transition metal complexes can usually be deduced from their formulas. However, this is not the case for transition metal carbonyl clusters whose structures more or less resemble those of boranes and carboranes. Tremendous interest in the shapes of metal carbonyl clusters have been kept alive for more than five decades. Polyhedral skeletal theory, Jemmis rules, graph theory, and topological theory among others have been put forward so as to understand the structures of transition metal carbonyl clusters. This paper presents a highly simplified user friendly cluster table based on k-values which can be utilized together with an empirical formula to deduce the symmetries of simple to more complex cluster carbonyl complexes without any background of cluster theories. This approach highly complements the existing theories, in particular, the renowned polyhedral skeletal electron pair theory (PSEPT).

shapes; Categorization; Categorization; Carbonyl Clusters

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