Complete assignment of the vibrational spectra of borazine: the inorganic benzene

Abstract

Borazine continues to be relevant in industries as diverse as energy utilisation via fuel cells and as a possible route to boron nitride. Despite it having been known for almost a century, the vibrational spectroscopy of borazine is still incomplete. The inclusion of inelastic neutron scattering spectra has enabled the observation of all of the internal modes of borazine (including the infrared and Raman forbidden modes) for the first time. A complete assignment has been generated with the use of dispersion corrected DFT calculations. This has shown that the accepted ordering of the modes is incorrect in some cases and rationalised conflicting assignments in the literature.