Towards Detection of a Long-lived Protonated Metal Cation: Generation of GeH2+ Using High-Energy Collisions
This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Volkswagen-Stiftung, and the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie. The Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum, Berlin, is acknowledged for generous allocation of computer time. R.S. is grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) for financial support, and thanks Dr. K. V. Raghavan, Director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, for his encouragement and assistance.
Graphical Abstract
A minimal lifetime of microseconds is displayed by the dication GeH2+, which has been detected for the first time as the product of charge-stripping experiments at 8 kV involving [GeH2]+ and O2. Coupled-cluster calculations suggest that XH2+ (X=Si, Ge) are both metastable with respect to internal conversion and dissociation via X+ and H+. The picture shows a potential energy surface scan of GeH2+ (—) and the corresponding Coulomb repulsion asymptote (- - - -).
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