Factors in the complexation of lanthanides

The lanthanide cations are classified as hard acids and thus will coordinate strongly with oxygen and fluorine donor atoms. The electrostatic model is applied to lanthanide complexes with the dielectric constant as a parameter; the plot of ΔG vs sum of ionic radii confirm the ionic nature of the bonding. The enthalpy and entropy changes are shown to compensate each other to produce an almost linear variation in the free energy of complexation. Outer-sphere and inner-sphere complexation is discussed