Abstract
Understanding structural changes during microsolvation of a solute by increasing numbers of CO2 molecules provides a path towards improved models of supercritical CO2 solvent properties. Microwave spectroscopic observations of fluoroethylene (FE) microsolvation by CO2 give two FE-(CO2)(2) isomers, each with fragments similar to previously studied planar FE-CO2 dimers. In each trimer, a second CO2 is located above the FE plane, in a position not observed for FE-CO2. Current work on FE/CO2 mixtures focuses on deconvoluting interleaved spectra in the microwave scan, aiming to identify FE-(CO2)(3) and other clusters, with patterns from at least five additional cluster spectra already identified. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.