Recent demonstrations of subsecond and microsecond timescales for formation of clathrate hydrate nanocrystals hint at future methods of control of environmental and industrial gases such as CO2 and methane. Combined results from cold-chamber and supersonic-nozzle [A. S. Bhabhe, "Experimental study of condensation and freezing in a supersonic nozzle," Ph.D. thesis (Ohio State University, 2012), Chap. 7] experiments indicate extremely rapid encagement of components of all-vapor pre-mixtures. The extreme rates are derived from (a) the all-vapor premixing of the gas-hydrate components and (b) catalytic activity of certain oxygenated organic large-cage guests. Premixing presents no obvious barrier to large-scale conditions of formation. Further, from sequential efforts of the groups of Trout and Buch, a credible defect-based model of the catalysis mechanism exists for guidance. Since the catalyst-generated defects are both mobile and abundant, it is often unnecessary for a high percentage of the cages to be occupied by a molecular catalyst. Droplets represent the liquid phase that bridges the premixed vapor and clathrate hydrate phases but few data exist for the droplets themselves. Here we describe a focused computational and FTIR spectroscopic effort to characterize the aerosol droplets of the all-vapor cold-chamber methodology. Computational data for CO2 and C2H2, hetero-dimerized with each of the organic catalysts and water, closely match spectroscopic redshift patterns in both magnitude and direction. Though vibrational frequency shifts are an order of magnitude greater for the acetylene stretch mode, both CO2 and C2H2 experience redshift values that increase from that for an 80% water-methanol solvent through the solvent series to approximately doubled values for tetrahydrofuran and trimethylene oxide (TMO) droplets. The TMO solvent properties extend to a 50 mol.% solution of CO2, more than an order of magnitude greater than for the water-methanol solvent mixture. The impressive agreement between heterodimer and experimental shift values throughout the two series encourages speculation concerning local droplet structures while the stable shift patterns appear to be useful indicators of the gas solubilities.

Ternary complexes of HNO(3)···HCl···H(2)O were investigated by ab initio calculations with aug-cc-pVDZ and aug-cc-pVTZ basis sets. The results are analyzed in terms of structures, energetics, and infrared vibrational frequencies. In all minima, neither HNO(3) nor HCl becomes ionized. The contribution of the nonadditivity effect, which is significant for hydrogen-bonded clusters, is bigger for the cyclic structures in which HNO(3) acts as a proton donor to HCl, although the global minimum contains HNO(3) donating its proton to a H(2)O molecule.

Recent years have yielded advances in the placement of unusual molecules as guests within clathrate hydrates (CHs) without severe distortion of the classic lattice structures. Reports describing systems for which observable but limited distortion does occur are available for methanol, ammonia, acetone, and small ether molecules. In these particular examples, the large-cage molecules often participate as non-classical guests H-bonded to the cage walls. Here, we expand the list of such components to include HCl/DCl and HBr as small-cage guests. Based on FTIR spectra of nanocrystalline CHs from two distinct preparative methods combined with critical insights derived from on-the-fly molecular dynamics and ab initio computational data, a coherent argument emerges that these strong acids serve as a source of molecular small-cage guests, ions, and orientational defects. Depending on the HCl/DCl content the ions, defects and molecular guests determine the CH structures, some of which form in sub-seconds via an all-vapor preparative method.

The structure and spectroscopic properties of clusters of HNO 3 ÁHClÁ(H 2 O) n , with n = 1 to 6, have been calculated at the MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ level of theory. Altogether 22 different clusters have been found as stable structures, with minima in their potential energy surfaces. The clusters can be grouped in families with the same number of water molecules, and with close aggregation energies within each family. The addition of each new water molecule increments the aggregation energy of the clusters by a nearly constant value of 76.2 AE 0.1 Hartree. The proton transfer parameter and the coordination number of HNO 3 and HCl in each cluster have been evaluated, and the wavenumber shifts for the X À -H + vibration from the corresponding mode in the isolated molecules have also been predicted. These values allow classification of the acidic species in the clusters into three types, characterized by the strength of the hydrogen bond and the degree of ionization. A correspondence is found between the coordination number of HNO 3 and the magnitude of the X À -H + vibrational shift.

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