Significant increase in the stability of rare gas hydrides on insertion of beryllium atom

Chemical binding between a rare gas atom with other elements leading to the formation of stable chemical compounds has received considerable attention in recent years. With an intention to predict highly stable novel rare gas compounds, the process of insertion of beryllium atom into rare gas hydrides (HRgF with Rg=Ar, Kr, and Xe) has been investigated, which leads to the prediction of HBeRgF species. The structures, energetic, and charge distributions have been obtained using MP2, density functional theory, and CCSD(T) methods. Analogous to the well-known rare gas hydrides, HBeRgF species are found to be metastable in nature; however, the stabilization energy of the newly predicted species has been calculated to be significantly higher than that of HRgF species. Particularly, for HBeArF molecule, it has been found to be an order of magnitude higher. Strong chemical binding between beryllium and rare gas atom has also been found in the HBeArF, HBeKrF, and HBXeF molecules. In fact, the basis set superposition error and zero-point energy corrected Be-Ar bond energy calculated using CCSD(T) method has been found to be 112 kJ/mol, which is the highest bond energy ever achieved for a bond involving an argon atom in any chemically bound neutral species. Vibrational analysis reveals a large blueshift (similar to 200 cm(-1)) of the H-Be stretching frequency in HBeRgF with respect to that in BeH and HBeF species. This feature may be used to characterize these species after their preparation by the laser ablation of Be metal along with the photolysis of HF precursor in a suitable rare gas matrix. An analysis of the nature of interactions involved in the present systems has been performed using theory of atoms in molecules (AIM). Geometric as well as energetic considerations along with the AIM results suggest a substantial covalent nature of Be-Rg bond in these systems. Thus, insertion of a suitable metal atom into rare gas hydrides is a promising way to energetically stabilize the HRgX species, which eventually leads to the formation of a new class of insertion compounds, viz., rare gas metallohydrides. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.