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BRIAN E. APPLEGATE, JEREMY M. MERRITT AND ROGER E. MILLER, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Deptartment of Chemistry, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.
Proton transfer in the ammonia-hydrogen halides serves as a prototypical acid-base reaction. Understanding the role of water in facilitating these types of reactions is important for both atmospheric chemistry and solution chemistry. Gas-phase and matrix experiments show that the proton remains attached to the halogen in anhydrous complexes for HF, HCl, and HBr. However, recent theoretical calculations have shown that the proton transfer proceeds with the addition of from one to three water molecules, for HBr, HCl, and HF, respectively. To study this reaction we have initiated a set of experiments where we sequentially add water molecules to preformed ammonia-hydrogen halide complexes inside helium droplets. Observation of the vibrational frequencies along with estimates of the dipole moments help to determine if proton transfer has taken place.