Academic Year 23/24 - Semester 2
Assessments:
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Closed-book Test 1: 20%
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Closed-book Test 2: 20%
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Final Exam: 60%
Lecturer: Dr Stephen Chui
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Course Overview:
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Part 1 (Transition Metal Chemistry): Symmetry elements & operations; point groups, Solid State Chemistry, Coordination Chemistry (Ligand classification, Crystal field theory, Magnetism, Jahn-Teller distortion, Spectrochemical series, Electronic absorption spectroscopy of TM complexes (dd transitions and charge transfer transitions), Irving-Williams series, Qualitative MO theory for octahedral MO complexes
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Part 2 (Introductory Organometallic Chemistry): Pi-accepting ligands, Metal-to-ligand pi back bonding, 18-electron rule, Oxidative addition and reductive elimination, Metal carbonyl complexes, Sandwich compounds
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No. of responses : 4
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REVIEWS
What advice would you give to someone considering to take this course?
udonzzz: The course is quite content heavy, especially for the topics on coordination chemistry and organometallic chemistry, so it would be good to study consistently so that one does not get overwhelmed by the amount of content to internalise and memorise. Also, a molecular model kit can be helpful for determining the point group and symmetry for certain more complex molecular structures that are hard to visualise in your head.
liangai :): Dr Chui is a very nice person. Although he records his lectures, it was very fulfilling to attend his classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I definitely recommend approaching him to clarify any questions about the content.
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t333b: Absolutely important to clarify concepts well in advance, as questions can be variations of what is covered in lecture, so concepts can be confused for one another. One should be confident in certain computations in the context of the compounds they apply to.
What did you enjoy or find most useful from this course?
udonzzz: Dr Chui made the lectures enjoyable to attend!
liangai :): Dr Chui takes the time to interact with students and keeps his tutorials engaging.
veryllium: Engaging prof!
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t333b: Course provides a solid introduction to structural and transition metal chemistry but I wish more of the course covered organometallics and trace metals which would have been of greater relevance to the other chemistry branches.
What aspects of the course did you find most challenging, and why?
udonzzz: For me the visualisation for point group symmetry was probably one of the harder parts, as there can be many different molecular structures to test on, so it would be good to practice identifying point groups.
veryllium: hardest part was visualising the rotations…
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t333b: Many concepts require revisiting from time to time to fully comprehend them, so the workload is more than it seems. Fortunately, Dr Chui is much better at answering questions even if the content is confusing, especially for the tutorials where the questions given required some recall of them.
What resources did you find most helpful in helping you better understand the course material?
liangai :): The lecture slides usually enough material to understand the topic. Otherwise, https://symotter.org/ is a useful tool to visualise the different symmetry elements!
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t333b: Housecroft provides surprisingly detailed diagrams and examples of reactions, but the lecture slides overlap with it a fair bit.
What other courses do you think should be taken before or concurrently with this course?
udonzzz: It is possible to take CM3131 together with this course, as some lecture content are overlapping, namely point group symmetry.
liangai :): can be taken as a standalone, some of its content is covered in CM3191 (transition metals complexes) and CM3131 (group theory)
veryllium: take 3191 and 3131…
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