Carbon monoxide is the diatomic compound . Its strong carbon-oxygen bond and carbon-centered donor interaction make it an important ligand in metal carbonyls.
Its bonding to metal centers involves both donation from carbon monoxide and back-donation into its antibonding orbitals. This changes the carbon-oxygen stretching frequency, making infrared spectra a useful probe of a complex's electronic structure. Carbon monoxide is chemically distinct from carbon dioxide, despite containing the same two elements.
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