HCl Vibrational-Rotational Spectroscopy

Adapted from Experiment #38 (Shoemaker, Garland, Nibler, 1989)

See Chapter 8 (Engel), more will be presented in lecture...

Sample Preparation

a) Pull the HCl (g) off the headspace of a bottle of concentrated HCl using a 60 mL syringe.

b) deliver the HCl (g) to the gas-sampling IR cell.

IR Gas-Phase Data Collection

a) Collect data using the highest resolution.

b) average 32 scans (both background and sample)

c) Save-As...

(A complete set of data can be found here.)

Spectral Analysis

a) load IR data into Igor or Excel.

b) Use the cursor tool to tabulate the H³⁵Cl and H³⁷Cl data into separate columns,

c) Assign an "m-value" to each transition (note the 'm=0' forbidden transition) with the help of the following graphic (click to make bigger).

Data Analysis

Okay, so you should now have a table, probably in Excel but if you know how to do it in Igor then great (Igor does not offer any advantages here) with heading like this:

m-value	H35Cl	H37Cl
-12	XXXX	YYYY
-11	XXXX	YYYY
-10	XXXX	YYYY
-9	XXXX	YYYY
...	...	...
+1	XXXX	YYYY
+12	XXXX	YYYY
+13	XXXX	YYYY

a) Make a plot, m-value verses freq (in 1/cm) for H³⁵Cl data; this will NOT be a straight line but a polynomial curve.

b) fit a second order polynomial to this data... ie y= ax² + bx +c, and note the values for a, b, and c in your notes (lab notebook preferred).

c) During our last lab period you were given a Shoemaker, etc. handout (???) that discussed this lab activity. Eq. 9 was:

align="center" ṽ = ṽ_o + (2B_e - 2 α_e) m - α_e m²

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_chlorine

atomic masses in amu

Reduced mass, "mu" = (m1*m2)/(m1+m2)

1H 1.007825 amu (99.9885%)

35Cl 34.968853 amu (75.78%)

37Cl 36.965903 amu (24.22%)

conversion factor: 1.66054e-27 kg/amu

4) Plot "m" (x) vs the frequency (y) and fit to a second order polynomial.

5) The second order polynomial will take the form of equation 9 from (Exp 38, Shoemaker), hence you can determine alpha_e, and then of B_e.

6) Using equation 5 and 3, then solve for "r" the average internuclear separation.