Merriles DM, Tomchak KH, Ewigleben JC, Morse MD. Predissociation measurements of the bond dissociation energies of EuO, TmO, and YbO.
J Chem Phys 2021;
155:144303. [PMID:
34654298 DOI:
10.1063/5.0068543]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
The observation of a sharp predissociation threshold in the resonant two-photon ionization spectra of EuO, TmO, and YbO has been used to measure the bond dissociation energies of these species. The resulting values, D0(EuO) = 4.922(3) eV, D0(TmO) = 5.242(6) eV, and D0(YbO) = 4.083(3) eV, are in good agreement with previous values but are much more precise. In addition, the ionization energy of TmO was measured by the observation of a threshold for one-color two-photon ionization of this species, resulting in IE(TmO) = 6.56(2) eV. The observation of a sharp predissociation threshold for EuO was initially surprising because the half-filled 4f7 subshell of Eu in its ground state generates fewer potential energy curves than in the other molecules we have studied by this method. The observation of a sharp predissociation threshold in YbO was even more surprising, given that the ground state of Yb is nondegenerate (4f146s2, 1Sg) and the lowest excited state of Yb is over 2 eV higher in energy. It is suggested that these molecules possess a high density of electronic states at the energy of the ground separated atom limit because ion-pair states drop below the ground limit, providing a sufficient electronic state density to allow predissociation to set in at the thermochemical threshold.
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