The Negative Ion database on the NIST Webbook has not been updated since 2014, in spite of statements there to the contrary, and that update is replete with cross-indexing errors. My own database - that the Webbook should have been built from - is current, correct, and contains at least 50% more data than the Webbook one. The Negion program(below) and the flattext file version ARE current and correct.
Negion 2K25: The Dec 2025 update is noe posted. Both the executable program and the documentation have been updated since Jun 2021.
There is now the alpha version of the database as a flat text file also at negall01, plus a WOrd version.
Link to Exact Mass of the Elements project for ASMS Measurements & Standards committee.
The powerpoints from the Living with Chemicals Everywhere talk
Email: bartmess@utk.edu
To examine such reactions, we used a modified mass spectrometer, called an ion cyclotron resonance (ICR) spectrometer. This allows gaseous ions to be trapped in a magnetic field for milliseconds to seconds, allowing them to bump into neutral molecules and react to form other ions and neutrals. We have shown that some reactions have the same mechanisms in the gas phase as in solution, while other reactions require at least one molecule of solvent to occur. Extensive scales of gas phase acidities and hydrogen bonding strengths have been measured.
Solution calorimetry was used to relate the gas phase thermochemistry to the condensed phase, obtaining ionic heats of solvation. We showed that the concept of "steric hindrance to solvation", as has been claimed to explain the inversion of aliphatic alcohol acidities from the gas phase to solution, was instead an entropy effect, due to forced solvent ordering around an ever-more bulky ion.
Development of the ICR instrumentation, involving better methods of pressure measurement at the ICR cell, and more accurate methods of determining ion intensity, was also an active area.
In retirement, I am still research-active in terms of the collection and evaluation of data for the Negative Ion themochemistry database of the NIST Webbook. I am also still writing up several projects from pre-retirement, primarily focused on computational chemistry and physical organic chemistry.