• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.29 no.10
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• pp.1973-1976
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• 2008

Electronic photodepletion spectrum of dibenzo-18-crown-6 with a potassium ion ($K^+$-DB18C6) was obtained in the gas phase using electrospray ionization and quadrupole ion-trap reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The spectrum exhibited rather a broad absorption band at 36350 $cm^{-1}$, which was tentatively assigned as the origin of the S1 band. The photodepletion spectrum of $Cs^+$-DB18C6 was also obtained to elaborate the effects of metal cations on electronic and geometric structures of metal cation-DB18C6 complexes. We found that the S1 band of $Cs^+$-DB18C6 was red-shifted by 180 $cm^{-1}$ from that of $K^+$-DB18C6. With the results of quantum theoretical calculations using the density functional theory, we suggested that the red-shift arose mainly from weaker binding of $Cs^+$ to DB18C6 than that of K+, which resulted from a larger size of $Cs^+$ than that of the cavity in DB18C6.