Charged-soft-sphere potentials for trivalent metal halides

Summary Octahedral-type coordination by halogens in the liquid state has been reported for a number of trivalent metal ions from diffraction and Raman scattering experiments on their molten trihalides and from Raman scattering spectroscopy of liquid mixtures of trihalides with alkali halides. We analyse the available data on bond lengths and Raman frequencies by treating an isolated (MX₆)³⁻ species within a model which adopts charged-soft-sphere interionic potentials supplemented by an account of ionic polarization. The trivalent metal ions that we consider are M=La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Dy and Y for X=Cl and M=Al for X=F. The main result of the analysis is the prediction of trends in the soft-sphere repulsive parameters for the trivalent metal ions, leading to estimates of all the vibrational frequencies and the binding energy of such octahedral species. Due to the relevance of its scientific content, this paper has been given priority by the Journal Direction.