New developments in the gas-phase rotational spectroscopy of high-temperature species and unstable molecules

Abstract

The detection of gaseous molecules of unstable and high-temperature species in the interstellar environment has prompted the development in many laboratories of methods of detecting such species in hostile environments such as flames, plasmas and pyrolysis reaction processes. Our laboratory has participated in the development of a method for producing high-temperature species at ca. 500 K instead of the 1200 to 3000 K to which the solid alkaline earth oxides or sulphides must be heated in order to produce sufficient vapour pressure for millimetre-wave detection. The method is applicable to many molecular systems including KCN and probably LiCN and NaCN whose molecular dynamics is expected to be anomalous and is not yet understood. Included in the discussion is our work on the plasma formation of long-chain cyanoacetylenes and the pyrolysis production of N-cyanoformimine, the millimetre-wave spectrum of which we have studied. In the field of molecular dynamics our results for the ν₇ manifold of C₃OS will be presented and the pronounced change of the bending potential functions between C₃O₂ and C₃OS will be shown.