The vibrational spectra of molecular ions isolated in solid neon. XVI. SO2+, SO2−, and (SO2)2−

Abstract

When a Ne:SO2 mixture is subjected to Penning ionization and/or photoionization by neon atoms in their first excited states, between 16.6 and 16.85 eV, and the products are rapidly frozen at approximately 5 K, the infrared spectrum of the resulting deposit includes absorptions assigned with the aid of isotopic substitution studies to SO, SO2+, SO2−, (SO2)2−, and, tentatively, SO−. The fundamental and first overtone absorptions of SO lie 0.9 and 1.8 cm−1, respectively, below the gas-phase band centers. Ab initio calculations at the Hartree–Fock level show an instability in the v3 vibration of SO2+ which is avoided by higher-level calculations. The ν3 and ν1 fundamentals of SO2− isolated in solid neon are identified at 1086.2 and 990.8 cm−1, respectively. In agreement with an earlier proposal, the 1042 cm−1 absorption originally assigned to ν3 of SO2− trapped in solid argon is reassigned to MSO2, with M an alkali metal. Near the photodetachment threshold for SO2− isolated in a neon matrix, electron capture by SO2 nearest-neighbor pairs results in growth of infrared absorptions of (SO2)2−, which has been shown by gas-phase studies to have a significantly higher photodetachment threshold than does SO2−. The isotopic substitution studies require that the two sulfur atoms in (SO2)2− be nonequivalent, favoring the linking of the two SO2 units by a S ⋯ O bond.