PNNL

Abstract

We report the first direct photodetachment photoelectron spectroscopy of HCO3 in the gas phase under low temperature conditions. The observed photoelectron spectra are complicated due to excitations of manifolds in both vibrational and electronic states. A long and single vibrational progression with a frequency of 530 ± 20 cm-1 is partially resolved in the threshold of the T=20 K, 266 nm spectrum. The adiabatic electron detachment energy (ADE) of HCO3, or in other words the electron affinity (EA) of neutral HCO3, is experimentally determined from the (0-0) transition to be 3.680 ± 0.015 eV. High-level ab initio calculations at the CCSD(T) level of theory produce an anharmonic frequency of 546 cm-1 for HCO3 and a value of 3.62 eV for the (0,0) transition, both in excellent agreement with the experimentally determined values.