This literature discussion was prepared as part of the 2025 ACS awards collection in honor of Gary J. Schrobilgen, winner of the M. Frederick Hawthorne Award in Main Group Inorganic Chemistry.

This literature discussion introduces students to various tetradentate ligands not commonly seen in textbooks.  Students can apply knowledge of ligand binding to predict coordination geometry while exploring how the 3D nature of more complex ligands can affect their coordination to a metal.

This LO was developed as a review activity for the end of the semester.  Students are required to touch on a wide range of topics including acid-base theories, crystal systems, point groups, the spectrochemical series, and 19F NMR spectroscopy.  A close reading of the paper is required helping to build student comprehension of the literature.

This activity was designed to assess student comprehension of how changes in pi-donation from ligands can affect both crystal field splitting and metal spin states.  The activity requires students to practice electron counting, idealized crystal field splitting, and then apply these concepts to explain the observed change from low to high spin caused by the loss of a proton.

This discussion is intended as a brief application of symmetry and ligand coordination to a novel Zr compound. Students apply VSEPR and molecular symmetry to an uncommon organometallic compound, and apply the coordination mode to basic reactivity. It is intended for an in-class activity but could easily be assigned as a short homework assignment.

This is a literature discussion focused on calculating and comparing the Mulliken electronegativites of the noble gases. Students can explore how this periodic property extends into the noble gases and impacts the observed reactivity of Group 18 compounds.  The discussion could be used either as an in-class activity or a homework assignment.

This Literature Discussion considers the synthesis of the first carbene-bismuthinidene complex by Gilliard and coworkers in 2019. This molecule serves as an illustration of different bonding models, as it can be described by multiple resonance structures invoking fully covalent, zwitterionic, and coordinate/dative bonding forms. Students analyze these resonance structures and their geometrical implications, then compare to the experimental structural evidence to come to a conclusion about which bonding model(s) best describe this molecule!