Journal of Physical Chemistry, Vol.100, No.22, 9247-9249, 1996
ESR and Ir Study of Cloo Exchange-Coupled to O-2
Photolysis below 100 K of the exchange-coupled complex [OClO,O-2] in KClO4 at lambda approximate to 365 nm yields a metastable product, already identified earlier as the complex [ClO,O-3] and also a stable product that we identify as an exchange-coupled complex of ClOO and O-2. The O-17 hyperfine splitting of the ESR spectrum serves to verify the presence of O-2 and the overall spin-doublet ground state of the complex, while the O--O stretching frequency nu(1) is used as a fingerprint of ClOO. The observed value of nu(1), the principal values of the spin Hamiltonian parameter matrices, and the structural clues conveyed by the direction of the principal axes with respect to the lattice all indicate that ClOO retains its integrity in the complex [ClOO,O-2] despite the extreme weakness of the Cl-O bond.