Presentation description

Europium is a lanthanide with a half-filled f-subshell, which gives it unique stability and potentially reactivity compared to other lanthanides. Although europium has been studied in the +2 and +3 oxidation states, little is known about the thermochemistry of Eu+ ([Xe]6s¹4f⁷). An effective way to study the thermodynamic properties of the europium cation is to use guided ion beam tandem mass spectrometry (GIBMS) to explore the kinetic energy dependence of ion/neutral reactions. In this experiment, europium cations react with H2, D2, and HD to form EuH+ and EuD+. The amount of product formed at different collision energies is converted into cross sections (a measure of the reaction probability). The energy dependence of the cross sections is then analyzed to determine the 0 K threshold energy of the product, which combined with the bond dissociation energies (BDEs) of the neutral reactants, can be used to determine the BDE of each product. Theoretical calculations were carried out using Gaussian 16 programs with the B3LYP, BHLYP, PBE0, and CCSD(T) levels of theory and the atomic natural orbital (ANO) and segmented Stuttgart-Dresden (Seg. SDD) basis sets for Eu+ and 6-311++G(3df,3p) for H and D to determine the BDEs of EuH+ and EuD+ to act as comparison to experimental values. These results, combined with future experimental data, can be used to identify applications of Eu+ and investigate periodic trends.