Probing the methyl torsional barriers of the doubly substituted methyl-ethyl Criegee intermediate by FTMW spectroscopy

In a previous work, Cabezas et al., 2017 [21], we reported the rotational study of the doubly substituted methyl-ethyl Criegee intermediate, C2H5C(CH3)OO, by using Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy. Four different conformers were found showing A/E splittings due to the internal rotation of methyl tops. However for one of the conformers, syn2, some of the observed lines showed additional splitting that could not be assigned. The present work has been aimed to shed light on these transition line splittings of the syn2 conformer which are assigned to additional splittings coming from the two nonequivalent tops. As a consequence, 182 lines have been observed and the analysis of the internal rotation motions of two non-equivalent methyl tops enabled us to determine the barrier heights of the hindered methyl rotation of the two tops.