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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

Exploring the Radical Nature of a Carbon Surface by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance and a Calibrated Gas Flow
Published on: April 24, 2014
Discovery of the new metastable HONF. radical
Fulvio Cacace1, Giulia de Petris, Marzio Rosi
1Dipartimento di Studi di Chimica e Tecnologia delle Sostanze Biologicamente Attive Università La Sapienza, P.le Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy.
Abstract:
The new radical HONF has been detected in the gas phase by neutralization-reionization mass spectrometry (NRMS). The radical has been identified and directly characterized as a gaseous isolated species, having a lifetime of at least 1 microsecond and a linear cis-trans structure of H-O-N-F connectivity. Detection of this molecule, which is highly unstable towards the dissociation into HF and NO and kinetically sufficiently stable to be observed, represents an advance in the search for high-energy species.
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