The first electron ionization mass spectrum of tellurium hexafluoride (TeF6) is reported. The starting material was produced by direct fluorination of Te metal or TeO2 with nitrogen trifluoride. Formation of TeF6 was confirmed through cryogenic capture of the tellurium fluorination product and analysis through Raman spectroscopy. The eight natural abundance isotopes were observed for each of the set of fragment ions: TeF5+, TeF4+ TeF3+, TeF2+, TeF1+, and Te+, Te2+. A trend in increasing abundance was observed for the even fluoride bearing ions: TeF1+ TeF2+ > TeF4+ > TeF6+, with the molecular ion TeF6+ not observed at all. Density functional theory based electronic structure calculations were used to calculate optimized ground state geometries of these gas phase species and their relative stabilities explain the trends in the data and the lack of observed signal for TeF6+.
Revised: May 21, 2015 |
Published: May 1, 2015
Citation
Clark R.A., B.K. McNamara, C.J. Barinaga, J.M. Peterson, N. Govind, A. Andersen, and D.G. Abrecht, et al. 2015.Electron Ionization Mass Spectrum of Tellurium Hexafluoride.Inorganic Chemistry 54, no. 10:4821-4826.PNNL-SA-108119.doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.5b00342