Abstract

The spectroscopy of gas phase BH2 has not been explored experimentally since the pioneering study of Herzberg and Johns in 1967. In the present work, laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) spectra of the Ã2B1(Πu)-X̃2A1 band system of 11BH2, 10BH2, 11BD2, and 10BD2 have been observed for the first time. The free radicals were "synthesized" by an electric discharge through a precursor mixture of 0.5% diborane (B2H6 or B2D6) in high pressure argon at the exit of a pulsed valve. A total of 67 LIF bands have been measured and rotationally analyzed, 62 of them previously unobserved. These include transitions to a wide variety of excited state bending levels, to several stretch-bend combination levels, and to three ground state levels which gain intensity through Renner-Teller coupling to nearby excited state levels. As an aid to vibronic assignment of the spectra, very high level hybrid ab initio potential energy surfaces were built starting from the coupled cluster singles and doubles with perturbative triples (CCSD(T))/aug-cc-pV5Z level of theory for this seven-electron system. In an effort to obtain the highest possible accuracy, the potentials were corrected for core correlation, extrapolation to the complete basis set limit, electron correlation beyond CCSD(T), and diagonal Born-Oppenheimer effects. The spin-rovibronic states of the various isotopologues of BH2 were calculated for energies up to 22 000 cm-1 above the (000) level without any empirical adjustment of the potentials or fitting to experimental data. The agreement with the new LIF data is excellent, approaching near-spectroscopic accuracy (a few cm-1) and has allowed us to understand the complicated spin-rovibronic energy level structure even in the region of strong Renner-Teller resonances.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2015

Notes/Citation Information

Published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, v. 142, no. 17, article 174302, p. 174302-1 through 174302-13.

Copyright 2015 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics.

The following article appeared in The Journal of Chemical Physics, v. 142, no. 17, article 174302, p. 1-13 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4919094

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4919094

Funding Information

The research of the Clouthier group was supported by the National Science Foundation. We are grateful to Dr. Bing Jin for recording a few of the BH2 spectra. R.T. acknowledges financial support from the Università of Bologna.

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