Octahedral and Tetrahedral View

It is convenient to picture the superposition of octahedral and tetrahedral complexes on to a cube. Take note that in the octahedral case the 6 ligands will be positioned at the centres of the faces of the cube while for the tetrahedral case the four groups are arranged to occupy the opposing diagonals on top and bottom of the cube.

Octahedral There would be an applet here if your browser supported JAVA! Tetrahedral

To get a clearer view of the orientation of these wireframe representations of the orbitals, try rotating them by dragging with the mouse.

The next page shows the spatial relationship of different d-orbitals with respect to octahedral stereochemistry. If you don't see the wireframe models above, then you are not using a JAVA enhanced browser.
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Mar-97, rjl