Knowledge Bank

The technique of laser ablation has greatly eased the production of diamagentic and paramagnetic metal-containing molecules for spectroscopic study. High resolution measurements can be made of the hyperfine splitting in the pure rotational transitions of these types of molecules with a cavity Fourier transform microwave (FTMW) spectrometer. The precise constants derived from these measurements then provide a means of probing the electronic structure of the molecule or free radical under investigation. As reported previously, we have constructed a laser ablation setup for our parallel configuration FTMW $spectrometerg$ Recently, we have used this system to measure the microwave spectra, between 4 and 26.5 GHz. of several magnesium containing molecules. For one of these compounds. MgNC, the $\mathrm{<mrow\; data-mjx-texclass="ORD">14</mrow>}N$ hyperfine splitting has been observed. Constants for both magnetic hyperfine and nuclear quadrupole hyperfine interactions have been derived from the observed transitions. These constants will be used to discuss the: electronic structures of these molecules and comparisons will be made to other similar systems.