Comment on the assignments of some vibrational bands of oxalyl fluoride

In view of existing contradictory assignments of the symmetrical stretching vibrations associated with the formal C-C and C-F bonds of trans/cis oxalyl fluoride, an additional theoretical analysis of the corresponding calculated wavenumbers was preformed on trans-C2O2F2 and cis-C2O2F2 based on previously calculated ab initio scaled force fields at the HF/6-31G computational level and new force fields calculated at the MP2/aug-cc-pVTZ level. This novel analysis included computational data from the isotopic shifts brought about by incorporating 13C and 14C atoms into the structure. A detailed examination of the calculated wavenumbers made it possible to validate the assignments of the ν2 and ν3 wavenumbers in the trans-C2O2F2 and cis-C2O2F2 molecules as the formal C-C bond stretching and the formal C-F bond symmetrical stretching vibrations, respectively.