AB INITIO MOLECULAR ORBITAL STUDY OF XO2+ (X = F, CL, BR, I) SYSTEMS

The depletion of stratospheric ozone has resulted in an increasing interest in the study of the possible reaction mechanisms responsible for its depletion. The structures and relative stabilities of the cationic forms of the halogen dioxides have been studied by means of ab initio molecular orbital calculations. For fluorine- and chlorine-containing compounds the geometries and the harmonic vibrational frequencies of all possible isomers were calculated at the QCISD/6-311+G(2d) level of theory. For bromine- and iodine-containing compounds the effective core-potential basis sets of Hay and Wadt, modified to include a set of diffuse functions and two sets of polarization functions, were employed. For all systems the final energies were obtained at the QCISD(T)/6-311+G(3df) level of theory. In addition, multiconfiguration-based methods have also been used. The relative stabilities of structures XOO{sup +} and OXO{sup +} are greatly reduced relative to those observed for the corresponding neutral species. In fact, for Cl and I derivatives, the lowest energy isomer corresponds to the symmetric OXO{sup +} open-chain species. The corresponding cyclic structures arise as local minima on the respective potential energy surfaces, but they lie much higher in energy than the OXO{sup +} open-chain form or the XOO{sup +} isomer. There are significant differencesmore » in bonding between XOO{sup +} and OXO{sup +}, the X-O interaction in OXO{sup +} being more covalent than in XOO{sup +}. There are also trends along the series that reflect the pronounced disparity between the electron affinity of F{sup +} and those of the heavier atoms of the group. FOO{sup +} species can be viewed as F({sup 2}P)-O{sub 2}{sup +} complexes, whereas XOO{sup +}(X = Br, I) species can be regarded as X{sup +}({sup 3}P)-O{sub 2} complexes. The OXO{sup +} open-chain species have an electron charge distribution similar to that of the ozone molecule, reflecting the same number of valence electrons in each case.« less