General characteristics of Transition Element

As discussed earlier, the elements zinc, cadmium, and mercury are not considered transition elements since their electronic configurations are different from other transition metals. However, the rest of the d-block elements are somewhat similar in properties and this similarity can be observed along each specific row of the periodic table. These properties of the transition elements are listed below.

• These elements form coloured compounds and ions. This colour is explained by the d-d transition of electrons.
• There is a relatively low gap in energy between the possible oxidation states of these elements. The transition elements, therefore, exhibit many oxidation states.
• Many paramagnetic compounds are formed by these elements, because of the unpaired electrons in the d orbital.
• A large variety of ligands can bind themselves to these elements. Due to this, a wide variety of stable complexes are formed by transition elements.
• These elements have a large ratio of charge to the radius.
• Transition metals tend to be hard and they have relatively high densities when compared to other elements.
• The boiling points and the melting points of these elements are high, due to the participation of the delocalized d electrons in metallic bonding.
• This metallic bonding of the delocalized d electrons also causes the transition elements to be good conductors of electricity.