Reply to the ‘Comment on “HCl adsorption on ice at low temperature: a combined X-ray absorption, photoemission and infrared study”’ by J. P. Devlin and H. Kang, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012, 14, DOI: 10.1039/c1cp22007a

Abstract

In their Comment, Devlin and Kang (DK) reinterpret the infrared data published in our previous article (P. Parent, J. Lasne, G. Marcotte and C. Laffon, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2011, 13, 7142), which look similar to those already published by V. Buch, J. Sadlej, N. Aytemiz-Uras and J. P. Devlin, J. Phys. Chem. A, 2002, 106, 9374 and J. P. Devlin, N. Uras, J. Sadlej and V. Buch, Nature, 2002, 417, 269, using assignments based on their previous model calculations (V. Buch, J. Sadlej, N. Aytemiz-Uras and J. P. Devlin, J. Phys. Chem. A, 2002, 106, 9374), with which we partially agree. However, some parts of their infrared interpretation are inconsistent with our NEXAFS and photoemission results, and they allege that these spectroscopies suffer from systematic errors due to radiation damage, which causes the fragmentation and ionization of HCl in the form of Cl⁻. In this Reply, we show that this assumption, central to the DK criticism, must be rejected. Furthermore, new infrared experiments confirm that, under our conditions, the band at 1740 cm⁻¹ can be only attributed to H₃O⁺. Then, the ionization of HCl at low temperature on H₂O ice films is a mere chemical process. This leaves the whole experiment and conclusions presented in our previous article unchanged.