Heats and Entropies of Reaction of Transition Metal Ions with Ethylenediamine

Abstract

THE heats of formation of complexes between ligands and metal ions are very important to further the ligand field-theory and check its implications. Until now, only the heats of hydration of the first transition group ions have been used for this purpose1 as the thermochemical data on the complexes formed by ligands other than water are very incomplete. The transition metal complexes of ethylenediamine, which have a very nearly octahedral configuration, could also be fruitfully studied in terms of ligand field-theory. Unfortunately only the thermal data on nickel (II), copper (II) and zinc (II) complexes are known2, and so the formation constants have been used instead of the values of enthalpy changes, with the optimistic assumption that the entropy changes remain constant1,3.