Titanium-water complexes are produced by laser vaporization in a pulsed supersonic expansion, mass selected in a time-of-flight spectrometer, and studied with infrared laser photodissociation spectroscopy using argon complex predissociation. Density functional theory calculations provide structures and vibrational spectra for these ions. Spectra in the O-H stretching region indicate that the water is intact in these complexes, even though inserted structures are computed to be more stable. Although the ground state of Ti( H2O)(+) is established to be a quartet, that predicted and observed for Ti(H2O)Ar+ is a doublet. Attachment of argon changes the electronic ground state of this system. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.