Equilibrium Gas Phase Composition of IIB/VIA compounds and identification of gaseous MeX(g) molecules

The equilibrium vaporization behaviour of twelve IIB/VIA‐compounds of the type MeX (Me = Zn, Cd, Hg and X = O, S, Se, Te) was studied by means of high‐temperature mass spectrometry. In the case of seven compounds (ZnO, CdO, HgO, CdS, HgS, ZnSe and CdSe) the existence of stable gaseous molecules MeX(g) was proven by verifying the isotopic distribution. The experimentally determined isotopic patterns of ZnS(g), ZnTe(g), CdTe(g) and HgSe(g) deviate from the calculated distributions due to the interference of background peaks. Analysis of the exact gas phase compositions of the IIB/VIA compounds shows that, with the exception of HgTe which decomposes according to equation image the IIB/VIA compounds vaporize as follows: equation image xi: mole fraction of the gaseous species Xi.