Talk:Cyanate

Lewis Structure

The Lewis structure for the cyanate ion seems incorrect. Oxygen has 6 valance electrons plus the added electron giving the ion a -1 charge. There should be 2 electron dots above and below the "O", so that the oxygen has 8 electrons: 2 on the left, 2 above, 2 below, and 2 in the shared bond with carbon. Also, don't polyatomic ions indicate charge by putting the Lewis structure in brackets with the charge indicated on the top right? — Parsa (talk) 00:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The number of electron pairs has been fix'd by now. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:25, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Language

This article seems to be written is some form of foreign tongue...it needs to be revised and reworded into English that normal people can understand. 96.41.159.83 (talk) 06:04, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

References are written in shorthand

Could someone who knows these references please write them out in full? Currently the references are written as last name of author (who might have written more than one book) and page number. Things like 'Nakamoto, Part A, p171' or 'Greenwood, p324' are unhelpful. 129.67.116.60 (talk) 15:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

The shorthand references refer to the sources listed in full under the "Bibliography" heading. -- Ed (Edgar181) 16:55, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Silver cyanato complex

@Petergans: You added that the silver cyanato complex, Ag(NCO)
₂, has a linear structure.

How do we know that? And can you supply a reference? Please ping me. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:25, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The structure is illustrated on table 8.9, p.325 (2nd. edition) of Greenwood & Earnshaw "Chemistry of the Elements". Petergans (talk) 08:28, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

@Petergans: Thanks for the reference. I managed to find it online. The answer to my question of how we know, is that somebody did X-ray crystallography of [AsPh
₄] [Ag(NCO)
₂]. But the same table also says that there exists a ring, consisting of the string of atoms -Ni-OCN-Ni-OCN- curled into a ring, in which the Ni-N-C part is bent. I'm surprised that the Ag(NCO)
₂ anion is linear, because naïvely I would say that each nitrogen atom had a lone pair of electrons. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:59, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Many years ago we postulated, on the basis of Raman spectroscopy data, that the ligand ammonia forms the linear complex [Ag(NH₃)₂]⁺ in aqueous ammonia solution but the tetrahedral complex [Ag(NH₃)₄]⁺ in liquid ammonia solution (at ambient temperature, in a sealed tube). (J.C.S.Chem. Comm. 1973, p.914) I understand from this that both enthalpy and entropy terms are critical in determinig which structure is formed : with aqueous ammonia as solvent the Gibbs free energy of dissociation for [Ag(NH₃)₄]⁺ → [AgNH₃)₂]⁺ + 2NH₃ is favourable, but it is unfavourable when the solvent is liquid ammonia. Petergans (talk) 18:03, 25 June 2020 (UTC)