Isotope effects are important in the making and breaking of chemical bonds in chemical reactivity. Here we report on a new discovery, that isotopic substitution can fundamentally alter the nature of chemical bonding. This is established by systematic, rigorous quantum chemistry calculations of the isotopomers BrLBr, where L is an isotope of hydrogen. All the heavier isotopomers of BrHBr, BrDBr, BrTBr, and Br(4)HBr, the latter indicating the muonic He atom, the heaviest isotope of H, can only be stabilized as van der Waals bound states. In contrast, the lightest isotopomer, BrMuBr, with Mu the muonium atom, alone exhibits vibrational bonding, in accord with its possible observation in a recent experiment on the Mu+Br2 reaction. Accordingly, BrMuBr is stabilized at the saddle point of the potential energy surface due to a net decrease in vibrational zero point energy that overcompensates the increase in potential energy.

Photoelectron detachment XLX(-)(00(0)0) + hν → XLX(vib) + e(-) + KER (X = Br or I, L = H or D) at sufficiently low temperatures photoionizes linear dihalogen anions XLX(-) in the vibrational ground state (v1v2 (l)v3 = 00(0)0) and prepares the neutral radicals XLX(vib) in vibrational states (vib). At the same time, part of the photon energy (hν) is converted into kinetic energy release (KER) of the electron [R. B. Metz, S. E. Bradforth, and D. M. Neumark, Adv. Chem. Phys. 81, 1 (1992)]. The process may be described approximately in terms of a Franck-Condon type transfer of the vibrational wavefunction representing XLX(-)(00(0)0) from the domain close to the minimum of its potential energy surface (PES) to the domain close to the linear transition state of the PES of the neutral XLX. As a consequence, prominent peaks of the photoelectron detachment spectra (pds) correlate with the vibrational energies EXLX,vib of states XLX(vib) which are centered at linear transition state. The corresponding vibrational quantum numbers may be labeled vib = (v1v2 (l)v3) = (00(0)v3). Accordingly, the related most prominent peaks in the pds are labeled v3. We construct a model PES which mimics the "true" PES in the domain of transition state such that it supports vibrational states with energies EXLX,pds,00(0)v3 close to the peaks of the pds labeled v3 = 0, 2, and 4. Subsequently, the same model PES is also used to calculate approximate values of the energies EXMuX,00(0)0 of the isotopomers XMuX(00(0)0). For the heavy isotopomers XHX and XDX, it turns out that all energies EXLX,00(0)v3 are above the threshold for dissociation, which means that all heavy XLX(00(0)v3) with wavefunctions centered at the transition state are unstable resonances with finite lifetimes. Turning the table, bound states of the heavy XLX are van der Waals (vdW) bonded. In contrast, the energies EXMuX,00(0)0 of the light isotopomers XMuX(00(0)0) are below the threshold for dissociation, with wavefunctions centered at the transition state. This means that XMuX(00(0)0) are vibrationally bonded. This implies a fundamental change of the nature of chemical bonding, from vdW bonding of the heavy XHX, XDX to vibrational bonding of XMuX. For BrMuBr, the present results derived from experimental pds of BrHBr(-) and BrDBr(-) confirm the recent discovery of vibrational bonding based on quantum chemical ab initio calculations [D. G. Fleming, J. Manz, K. Sato, and T. Takayanagi, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 53, 13706 (2014)]. The extension from BrLBr to ILI means the discovery of a new example of vibrational bonding. These empirical results for the vibrational bonding of IMuI, derived from the photoelectron spectra of IHI(-) and IDI(-), are supported by ab initio simulations of the spectra and of the wavefunction representing vibrational bonding of IMuI.

We present ab initio calculations of EFGs at impurities in a TiO

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