Reactivity and infrared spectroscopy of gaseous hydrated trivalent metal ions.

Hydrated trivalent rare earth metal ions containing yttrium and all naturally abundant lanthanide metals are formed using electrospray ionization, and the structures and reactivities of these ions containing 17-21 water molecules are probed using blackbody infrared radiative dissociation (BIRD) and infrared action spectroscopy. With the low-energy activation conditions of BIRD, there is an abrupt transition in the dissociation pathway from the exclusive loss of a single neutral water molecule to the exclusive loss of a small protonated water cluster via a charge-separation process. This transition occurs over a narrow range of cluster sizes that differs by only a few water molecules for each metal ion. The effective turnover size at which these two dissociation rates become equal depends on metal ion identity and is poorly correlated with the third ionization energies of the isolated metals but is well correlated with the hydrolysis constants of the trivalent metal ions in bulk aqueous solution. Infrared action spectra of these ions at cluster sizes near the turnover size are largely independent of the specific identity of the trivalent metal ion, suggesting that any differences in the structures of the ions present in our experiment are subtle.