PNNL

Abstract

Infrared spectra of the NH stretching vibrations of (NH3)n clusters (n=2-4) have been obtained using the helium droplet isolation technique and first principles electronic structure anharmonic calculations. The measured spectra exhibit well-resolved bands, which have been assigned to the ?1, ?3, and 2?4 modes of the ammonia fragments in the clusters. The formation of a hydrogen bond in ammonia dimers leads to an increase of the infrared intensity by about a factor of four. In the larger clusters the infrared intensity per hydrogen bond is close to the one for dimers and approaches the value in the NH3 crystal. The intensity of the 2?4 overtone band in the trimer and tetramer increases by a factor of 10 relative to that in the monomer and dimer, and is comparable to the intensity of the ?1 and ?3 fundamental bands in larger clusters. This indicates the onset of the strong anharmonic coupling of the 2?4 and ?1 modes in larger clusters. The experimental assignments are compared to the ones obtained from first principles electronic structure anharmonic calculations for the dimer and trimer clusters. The anharmonic calculations were performed at the Møller-Plesset (MP2) level of electronic structure theory and were based on a second-order perturbative evaluation of rovibrational parameters and their effects on the vibrational spectra and average structures. In general there is excellent (