The Remarkable I₂O₃ Molecule: A New View from Theory

Atmospheric iodine chemistry has garnered increasing attention as a result of increased iodine emissions. A key subset of this chemistry involves iodine oxides (I₂O_2-5), which serve as precursors to particle formation. Among these, I₂O₃ is the simplest iodine oxide involved in particle formation, but it has remained undetected in the atmosphere. Previous theoretical studies have characterized this peculiar molecule, primarily using energies to refine geometries obtained at low levels of theory. Due to the reemerging interest in I₂O₃, this study presents geometries optimized at the CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pwCVTZ-PP level of theory─marking the first instance, to the best of our knowledge, where this system has been studied exclusively with CCSD(T). Harmonic vibrational frequencies were computed at the same level of theory. Final energetics were obtained using the very high level CCSDT(Q) method with basis sets up to quintuple-zeta cardinality (aug-cc-pwCV5Z-PP) and extrapolated to the CBS limit to yield CCSDT(Q)/CBS//CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pwCVTZ-PP energies. These energies include harmonic zero-point vibrational energy corrections and scalar relativistic energy corrections. Additionally, this study discovers new isomers along the I₂O₃ potential energy surface, a novel contribution to the field. The performance of different computational methods and DFT functionals commonly used in atmospheric chemistry is also assessed relative to high-level theoretical methods.