The electronic configuration tells us how the electrons are configured within the atom. To write the electronic configuration of Manganese (Mn) we first check its atomic number in the periodic table, this will tell us the number of protons that the element has. The number of protons in Mn is 25.
In a neutral atom, the number of electrons will be equal to the number of protons, but in this case, we have an ion with a positive charge +4. This means that the atom lost 4 electrons, that is, the Mn+4 ion has 21 electrons.
Now, to fix the electrons and the way in which the electrons are filled, we can be guided by the Aufbau principle. The following figure shows a scheme of how the electrons are filled:
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atomic_orbital_diagonal_rule.svg.
Now we are writing the configuration following the order of the arrows until completing 21 electrons. We must remember that we have different kinds of orbitals and each orbital has the capacity to hold a maximum number of electrons. The s orbital holds 2 electrons, the p orbital holds 6, the d orbital holds 10.
Therefore the eletron configuration of Mn+4 will be:
[tex]1s^22s^22p^63s^23p^64s^23d^1[/tex]The coefficient of each orbital represents the energy level, that is to say, that here we have 4 energy levels. The superscripts represent the number of electrons, the sum of them must be equal to 21 in this case.
