Explaining The Colors of Transition Metal Complexes
The bright colors exhibited by many coordination compounds can be explained by Crystal Field Theory. If the d-orbitals of such a complex have been split into two sets as described above, when the molecule absorbs a photon of visible light one or more electrons may momentarily jump from the lower energy d-orbitals to the higher energy ones to transiently create an excited state atom. The difference in energy between the atom in the ground state and in the excited state is equal to the energy of the absorbed photon, and related inversely to the wavelength of the light. Because only certain wavelengths (λ) of light are absorbed - those matching exactly the energy difference - the compounds appears the appropriate complementary color.
As explained above, because different ligands generate crystal fields of different strengths, different colors can be seen. For a given metal ion, weaker field ligands create a complex with a smaller Δ, which will absorb light of longer λ and thus lower frequency ν. Conversely, stronger field ligands create a larger Δ, absorb light of shorter λ, and thus higher ν. It is, though, rarely the case that the energy of the photon absorbed corresponds exactly to the size of the gap Δ; there are other things (such as electron-electron repulsion and Jahn-Teller effects) that also affect the energy difference between the ground and excited states.
Read more about this topic: Crystal Field Theory
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