Knowledge Bank

A pulsed electric discharge apparatus has been designed and incorporated with a cavity microwave Fourier transfrom spectrometer. Samples have been prepared both by reaction with metal from the electrodes and by decomposition of suitable precursors. Example metal compounds are AgCl and AgF; for the former the very high resolution of the instrument has besn used to improve greatly the precision of the $\mathrm{<mrow\; data-mjx-texclass="ORD">35</mrow>}Cl$ quadrupole coupling constant. Examples of the latter have been the semi-stable molecules $SiF2$ and FCCCN. For $SiF2$ the $\mathrm{<mrow\; data-mjx-texclass="ORD">19</mrow>}F$ magnetic hyperfine structure has been resolved, and has produced both spin-spin and spin-rotation coupling constants. For FCCCN we have made the first measurements of the $\mathrm{<mrow\; data-mjx-texclass="ORD">14</mrow>}N$ quadrupole coupling constant.