Investigation of some divalent manganese complexes

Abstract

Nowadays it is standard procedure to prepare the compounds of unstable valency states of metals by means of the co-ordination complex. Such was the author's original intention, the valency state in question being the tervalency of manganese. To accomplish this, a rather unstable manganic salt was first prepared, and this was then treated with potassium thiocyanate and pyridine to yield the thiocyanato- pyridine complex of tervalent manganese. The method succeeded in that several crystalline complexes were readily formed, but it soon became apparent from analysis that the manganese present in these compounds was probably in the divalent and not the trivalent state. The work which follows is an account of the investigation of the structure of these co-ordination complexes.