Studies of Neutral Rare-Gas Compounds and their Non-Covalent Interactions with Other Molecules

The main focus of this review is a new class of neutral molecules containing chemically bonded rare gas atoms. These compounds are given by the general formula HRgX, where Rg denotes a rare gas atom and X denotes an atom or group of atoms having high electron affinity. They are usually produced by photolysis of a HX precursor in low temperature rare-gas matrices. These novel compounds are highly polar and form weakly bound metastable complexes with other molecules via non-covalent interactions. In this review, we discuss theoretical studies of the structure, bonding, properties and factors influencing the energetic stability of these rare-gas species, the preparation and vibrational spectroscopy of these molecules and some theoretical approaches to understanding the nature of these molecules, with experimental studies discussed where appropriate. The complexes formed by the rare-gas compounds exhibit unusual structural and spectroscopic features, which are also discussed in the review.