Cyanate is an ambidentate ligand which can donate the pair of electrons on the nitrogen atom or the oxygen atom, or both. Structurally the isomers can be distinguished by the geometry of the complex. In "N"-bonded cyanate complexes the M−NCO unit sometimes has a linear structure, but with "O"-bonded cyanate the M−O−C unit is bent. Thus, the silver cyanato complex, has a linear structure as shown by X-ray crystallography. However, the crystal structure of silver cyanate shows zigzag chains of nitrogen atoms and silver atoms. There also exists a structure