Search for stratospheric bromine reservoir species: Theoretical study of the photostability of mono-, tri-, and pentacoordinated bromine compounds

A study examining the singlet and triplet excited electronic states of several bromine compounds, using time dependent density functional theory, to access their photostability under stratospheric condition is conducted. The results show that several pentacoordinated bromine/oxygen compounds that could be photostable in the lower stratosphere, but it also shows that monovalent bromine compounds where the bromine atom is bounded to an atom with no lone-pair p-electrons is far and away the most photostable.