A new view on the spectrochemical and nephelauxetic series on the basis of spin-polarized conceptual DFT.

The spectrochemical and nephelauxetic series are analyzed within the context of spin-polarized conceptual DFT. For a series of different [RuL(6)](x) complexes, the local spin-philicity omega(S,Metal)+ condensed on the metal ion shows a remarkable analogy with some semi-empirical scales of the spectrochemical series. The local f(SS,Metal)+ Fukui function in turn can be linked to the nephelauxetic effect. Herein, we present a non-empirical, unified approach for a quantitative discussion of both series.