Many approaches have been put forth to explain the nature of
bonding in coordination compounds viz Valence Bond Theory (VBT),
Crystal Field Theory (CFT), Ligand Field Theory (LFT) and Molecular
Orbital Theory (MOT) We shall focus our attention on elementary
treatment of the application of VBT and CFT to coordination compounds According to this theory, the metal atom or ion under the influence of
ligands can use its (n-1)d, ns, np or ns, np, nd orbitals for hybridisation
to yield a set of equivalent orbitals of definite geometry such as octahedral,
tetrahedral, square planar and so on (Table 5