Anionic ligands: Names and abbreviations

Contribution from Axel's Collection of Notes and Communications
Subject: Coordination Chemistry
Edited and published by Axel Drefahl • www.axeleratio.com

Indexes for anionic ligands have been generated to provide quick identification of frequently occurring ligands and look-up of appropriate short forms of their names for use in line formulae of complex molecules. The indexes are:

According to the rules of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the name of an anionic ligand is derived from the corresponding anion name: The endings -ate, -ide, and -ite in anion names are changed into -ato, -ido, and -ito, respectively. For example, the anion ethanoate (also: acetate) becomes the ligand ethanoato (also:acetato) and the bromide anion becomes the bromido ligand.

When the anionic ligand ending does not occur at the end

Depending on the type and arrangement of substructural parts in a molecule, nomenclature rules require the placement of certain names for substructural parts into parentheses. Hence, ligand names may end in a closing round bracket, as in the systematic name 2-amino(ethan-1-olato), for which, however, the alternative name ethanolaminato, abbreviated as ea, is often used.
Anionic ligand names also end in a closing round bracket, when the ionic charge is included in the name, as in adenosine 5'-triphosphato(4-), abbreviated as atp.

Abbreviation characteristics

Abbreviations have been derived from both systematic and common ligand names, as the above examples show. Abbreviations are at least two characters long. Typically, all letters are written in lower case. However, exceptions exist: the formula-abbreviation hybrid Et2dtc, denoting N,N-diethyldithiocarbamato (systematic name: N,N-diethylcarbamodithionato), is an example.

Selected references

[Gisp2008] Joan Ribas Gispert: Coordination Chemistry. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co.KGaA, Weinheim, Germany, 2008. ISBN: 978-3-527-31802-5
Introduction: Definitions, History, Nomenclature (pages XXIX to XL)
[IUPAC2005] Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry. IUPAC Recommendations 2005 Prepared for publication by Neil G. Connelly, Ture Damhus, Richard M. Hartshorn, and Alan T. Hutton. RCS Publishing, Thomas Graham House, Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 0WF, UK, 2005.
Section IR-4.4.4: Ligand abbreviations (also: Table VII)



Last update was made on May 2 in 2009 by Axel Drefahl
Please, email comments and suggestions to axeleratio@yahoo.com

Custom Search