Probing ground and low-lying excited states for HIO2 isomers

We present a computational study on HIO2 molecules. Ground state properties such as equilibrium structures, relative energetics, vibrational frequencies, and infrared intensities were obtained for all the isomers at the coupled-cluster with single and double excitations as well as perturbative inclusion of triples (CCSD(T)) level of theory with the aug-cc-pVTZ-PP basis set and ECP-28-PP effective core potential for iodine and the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set for hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The HOIO structure is confirmed as the lowest energy isomer. The relative energies are shown to be HOIO < HOOI < HI(O)O. The HO(O)I isomer is only stable at the density functional theory (DFT) level of theory. The transition states determined show interconversion of the isomers is possible. In order to facilitate future experimental identification, vibrational frequencies are also determined for all corresponding deuterated species. Vertical excitation energies for the three lowest-lying singlet and triplet excited states were determined using the configuration interaction singles, time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT)/B3LYP, TD-DFT/G96PW91, and equation of motion-CCSD approaches with the LANL2DZ basis set plus effective core potential for iodine and the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set for hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It is shown that HOIO and HOOI isomers have excited states accessible at solar wavelengths (<4.0 eV) but these states have very small oscillator strengths (<2 × 10(-3)).