Spectrophotometric determination of the electron affinities of some diatomic molecules

THE purpose of this communication is to present a calculation of the electron affinities of some molecules from charge transfer spectra. Mulliken's¹ theory for a charge-transfer process leads to the expression: where hν_max. is the energy corresponding to the most probable electronic transition, I_D and E_A are the vertical ionization potential of the electron donor and the vertical electron affinity of the electron acceptor. Δ represents the stabilization energy, relative to the ground-state, of the excited state in the nuclear configuration corresponding to the ground-state. This relation has been confirmed for some series of various donors with one acceptor^2,3 and for series of a particular donor with various acceptors⁴.