Stability Constants of Metal Complexes in Solution

Abstract

In the formation of metal complexes in an aqueous medium, equilibrium constant or stability constant is used to determine the strength of interaction between reagents that make the final product after the formation of bonds. In general stability means that a complex may be stored for a long time under suitable conditions or this compound may be existing under suitable conditions. Regarding how much is the concentration of complexes in solution, stability constant provides this information via calculations. These calculations are very much important in many areas of science like chemistry, biology, and medicine. During the complex formation in aqueous medium, two types of stabilities are considered: one is the thermodynamic stability, and the other is kinetic stability. Stability of metal complexes may be affected by various factors like nature of central metal ion and ligand, chelating effect, etc., and some parameters like distribution coefficients, conductance, refractive index, etc. are useful for the determination of stability constants. Various modern techniques are used to determine the stability constant of simple as well as mixed ligand compounds.