Low temperature matrix isolation spectroscopy has been developed over the past two decades into a powerful technique for the study of reactive chemical species. When reactive molecules, radicals or ions are trapped in low concentrations in a frozen film of an unreactive material such as argon, they may be studied spectroscopically without the use of rapid scanning instrumentation. This technique is especially suited to the study of vibrational spectra of trapped species. The sharp vibrational absorptions observed in the absence of complicated rotational structure are well suited for study by high-resolution Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, especially in studying compounds containing natural abundance or enriched isotopes. High resolution FTIR spectroscopy has been used recently in this laboratory to observe natural abundance chlorine isotope splittings in the IR spectra of ions produced by illuminating matrix isolated methylene chloride with 11 eV photons. Isotopic effects on complexes of hydrogen fluoride and ethylene in solid argon have also been successfully studied using high resolution FTIR techniques.

Date Published: 29 October 1981
PDF: 2 pages
Proc. SPIE 0289, 1981 Intl Conf on Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, (29 October 1981); doi: 10.1117/12.932108

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0289:
1981 Intl Conf on Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
Hajime Sakai, Editor(s)