Observation of the Hypermetallic Molecule K2CN by Laser Ablation Mass Spectrometry

A new type of hypermetallic molecule, K 2 CN, has been generated by laser ablation of the solid material K 3 Fe(CN) 6 and detected by a reflectron time of flight mass spectrometer. This new type of hypermetallic compound should have many physical and thermochemical properties similar to those of Li 2 CN, which was predicted by ab initio calculations and observed by Kudo et al. ( J. Phys. Chem. 1995, 99, 6477). In this paper, observations on both the K 2 CN + and the K 2 CN molecules are presented.