What is Terminal Ligands

The geometry of clusters with ligands and a polyhedral frame is considered by the methods of studying the geometry of higher-dimensional polytopes, developed in the author's monograph. It is shown that these methods allow us to establish important details of cluster geometry, which elude analysis based on the representations of three-dimensional geometry. It is established that the well-known Kuban cluster is a 4-cross-polytope, which allows different variants of the Kuban cluster. A cluster of gold with a tetrahedral backbone is a 5-cross-polytope. The cluster tetra anion of cobalt is a polytope of dimension 5 of a new type. Different types of ligands limit the cobalt skeleton from above and below.