Spectroscopy of Diatomic Transition Metals

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In this project in the Experimental Physical Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division, Dr. M. Morse of the University of Utah will investigate the chemical bonding and electronic structure of diatomic transition metal molecules using electronic spectroscopy. The methods include resonant two-photon ionization, high resolution laser-induced fluorescence, and dispersed fluorescence spectroscopy. In all cases the samples are prepared by pulsed laser vaporization of a suitable metal target, followed by supersonic expansion with helium as the carrier gas. The severe cooling that attends this expansion brings about significant reductions in the complexity of the spectra without which their analysis would be prohibitively difficult if not impossible. The research will focus on the diatomic molecules of iron, cobalt, titanium, niobium, tantalum, and platinum, as well as on their mixed diatomic variants. %%% Prof. Morse is recognized as an expert on gas phase transition metal dimer (and trimer) molecules. The work is in an area of great relevance to disciplines ranging from computational quantum chemistry to the inorganic chemistry of transition metal alloys. The results of this research will be ground and excited state symmetries, bond strengths, bond lengths, and vibrational frequencies for the transition metal molecules studied. These results in turn provide benchmark data for the development and testing of reliable quantum chemical models for transition metal molecules.