Knowledge Bank

About ten absorption bands of the SiC radical in gas phase in the region 5000-4300 \AA have been observed by using the flash discharge technique. Phenylsilane was used as the parent compound. At high resolution the band head of each of these bands splits into a number of sub-heads. A successful re-analysis of the known emission bands of SiC along with the absorption bands observed in the present work, changes the values of $v1\prime ,v2\prime$ and $v1\prime \prime$. The splitting of the heads has been interpreted as the Renner-Teller splitting of the linear Si-C-C molecule.