Polarized x-ray emission studies of methyl chloride and the chlorofluoromethanes

A new technique sensitive to molecular orientation and geometry, and based on measuring the polarization of x-ray emission, has been applied to the Cl-containing molecules methyl chloride (CH₃Cl) and the chlorofluoromethanes (CF₃Cl, CF₂{Cl}₂$, and ${CFCl}₃$) in the gas phase. Upon selective excitation using monochromatic synchrotron radiation in the Cl K-edge (Cl 1s) near-threshold region, polarization-selective x-ray emission studies reveal highly polarized molecular valence x-ray fluorescence for all four molecules. The degree and the orientation of the polarized emission are observed to be sensitive to the incident excitation energy near the Cl K edge. In some cases, the polarization direction for x-ray emission reverses for small changes in incident excitation energy (a few eV). It is shown that the polarized x-ray emission technique can be used to infer, directly from experiment, symmetries of occupied and unoccupied valence molecular orbitals, an- isotropies in absorption and emission, and orientational and geometrical information. It is suggested that the x-ray polarized-fluorescence phenomenon, reported here for simple molecules, can be used as a new approach to study more complicated systems in a variety of environments.