			15min:

THE STRUCTURE OF CO₂-N₂O DETERMINED BY FOURIER TRANSFORM MICROWAVE SPECTROSCOPY OF THE ¹⁵N¹⁴NO-CONTAINING ISOTOPOMER.

MARK D. MARSHALL, Department of Chemistry-2243, Amherst College, P.O. Box 5000, Amherst, MA 01002-5000; AND HELEN O. LEUNG, Department of Chemistry, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075-6407.

In both the infrared and previous microwave studies of the van der Waals molecule \chemCO₂-N₂O, it was impossible to resolve experimentally the structural ambiguity concerning the orientation of the \chemN₂O subunit in this approximately slipped parallel complex. Isotopic substitution of the outer nitrogen in the \chemN₂O results in a microwave spectrum that is consistent with a structure in which the terminal oxygen of the \chemN₂O is closer to the central carbon of the \chemCO₂. Substitution coordinates derived from Kraitchman's equations support this conclusion. This experimentally determined structure is in agreement with the conclusion reached on the basis of ab initio results used in conjunction with the earlier infrared work.^a