Infrared absorption, vibrational modes

It is important to appreciate that Raman shifts are, in theory, independent of the wavelength of the incident beam, and only depend on the nature of the sample, although other factors (such as the absorbance of the sample) might make some frequencies more useful than others in certain circumstances. For many materials, the Raman and infrared spectra can often contain the same information, but there are a significant number of cases, in which infrared inactive vibrational modes are important, where the Raman spectrum contains complementary information. One big advantage of Raman spectroscopy is that water is not Raman active, and is, therefore, transparent in Raman spectra (unlike in infrared spectroscopy, where water absorption often dominates the spectrum). This means that aqueous samples can be investigated by Raman spectroscopy. 

Any species showing infrared active vibrational modes adsorbed on a reflecting surface can be studied with infrared spectroscopy. The beam of light will interact absorptively with the species when passing through the adsorbate layer before and after the point of reflection. This enables studies of all kinds of adsorbates on many surfaces. Of particular interest in electrochemistry are surfaces of metals and semiconductors employed as electrodes. Thus the following text deals only with reflection at these surfaces other surface and interfaces are not treated. Attempts to record infrared spectra of emersed electrodes (i.e. ex situ measurements) have been reported infrequently in studies of adsorption of hydroquinone and benzoquinone on a polycrystalline platinum electrode [174-177]. Further development of this approach has... 

Nevertheless, even for polyacetylene, the electronic structure is not that of a simple metal in which the bond-alternation and the tc-tc gap have gone to zero there are infrared active vibrational modes (IRAV) and a pseudo-gap. This is indicated by the spectra in Figure 2 which demonstrate the remarkable similarity between the doping-induced absorption found with heavily doped trans-(CH)x, and the photoinduced absorption spectrum observed in the pristine semiconductor containing a very few photoexcitations. Not only are the same IRAV mode spectral features observed, they have almost identical frequencies. 

Polyatomic molecules vibrate in a very complicated way, but, expressed in temis of their normal coordinates, atoms or groups of atoms vibrate sinusoidally in phase, with the same frequency. Each mode of motion functions as an independent hamionic oscillator and, provided certain selection rules are satisfied, contributes a band to the vibrational spectr um. There will be at least as many bands as there are degrees of freedom, but the frequencies of the normal coordinates will dominate the vibrational spectrum for simple molecules. An example is water, which has a pair of infrared absorption maxima centered at about 3780 cm and a single peak at about 1580 cm (nist webbook). 

One type of single point calculation, that of calculating vibrational properties, is distinguished as a vibrations calculation in HyperChem. A vibrations calculation predicts fundamental vibrational frequencies, infrared absorption intensities, and normal modes for a geometry optimized molecular structure. 

Just as group vibration wavenumbers are fairly constant from one molecule to another, so are their intensities. For example, if a molecule were being tested for the presence of a C—F bond there must be not only an infrared absorption band due to bond-stretching at about 1100 cm but also it must be intense. A weak band in this region might be attributable to another normal mode. 

Normal modes of vibration, with their corresponding normal coordinates, are very satisfactory in describing the low-lying vibrational levels, usually those with u = 1 or 2, which can be investigated by traditional infrared absorption or Raman spectroscopy. For certain types of vibration, particularly stretching vibrations involving more than one symmetrically equivalent terminal atom, this description becomes less satisfactory as v increases. 

If we further assume that the vibrational wavefunctions associated with normal mode i are the usual harmonic oscillator ones, and r = u + 1, then the integrated intensity of the infrared absorption band becomes... 

Fig.2 shows the infrared absorption spectrum of the tin oxide film. In order to analyze the molecular structure of the deposited film, we deposited the tin oxide film on a KBr disc with thickness of 1 mm and diameter of 13 mm. Various peaks formed by surface reaction are observed including O-H stretching mode at 3400 cm, C=C stretching mode at 1648 cm, and Sn02 vibration mode at 530 cm. The formation of sp structure with graphite-like is due to ion bombardment with hydrogen ions at the surface and plasma polymerization of methyl group with sp -CHa. 

Fig. 6. Vibrational states corresponding to axial H-atom vibrations (y-coordinate) and perpendicular B-atom vibrations (atj, x2 — coordinates) in the absence and presence of anhar-monic coupling (see text). For state mn,n2>, the m is the H-vibrational quantum number, and the n s are the B-vibrational quantum numbers. The infrared absorption corresponding to the m = 0 to m = 1 transition is sensitive to the B-isotope, as seen in the figure (solid vertical lines). Also, the transition n = 0 to n = 2 is now weakly allowed due to the mixing with the H-mode these two-phonon transitions are indicated by dashed vertical lines. Less important vibrational states are not shown on the figure.

As the isoquinoline molecule reorients in the order listed above, the absorption of infrared radiation by the in-plane vibrational modes would be expected to increase, while that of the out-of-plane modes would be predicted to decrease (in accordance with the surface selection rule as described above). In the flat orientation there is no component of the dipole moment perpendicular to the surface for the in-plane modes, and under the surface selection rule these modes will not be able to absorb any of the incident radiation. However, as mentioned above, infrared active modes (and in some cases infrared forbidden transitions) can still be observed due to field-induced vibronic coupled infrared absorption (16-20). We have determined that this type of interaction is present in this particular system. 

The number of peaks actually observed in an infrared spectrum is often less than the maximum because some of the vibrations are energetically identical or degenerate. A real molecule will often have two or more vibrations that may differ only by their orientation in space. These will have exactly the same energy and result in one absorption peak. In addition to the degeneracy of vibrational modes, there is also the requirement that a vibration result in a change in the dipole moment of the molecule needs to be observed. 

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