A crossed laser-molecular beam study of the one and two photon dissociation dynamics of ferrocene at 193 and 248 nm

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A crossed laser-molecular beam study of the one and two photon dissociation mechanism of bis (cyclopentadienyl) iron (ferrocene, FeCp2) has been performed at 193 and 248 nm. By combining electron bombardment mass spectroscopy with time-of-flight (TOF) measurements, the photodissociation mechanism at 193 nm is shown to have two distinct mechanisms. (1) FeCp2+hν→FeCp*+Cp; (2) FeCp+2hν→FeCp+Cp, FeCp→Fe+Cp. For the first mechanism, which accounts for less than 5% of the photodissociation events, the FeCp* velocity distribution is quantitatively consistent with a statistical dissociation producing FeCp in an excited, ligand field electronic state. The velocity distributions of the Cp and Fe fragments produced by the second mechanism (FeCp is an unstable intermediate) are also in excellent agreement with microcanonical calculations for both Cp elimination steps using the known metal–ligand bond energies of ferrocene. For the second mechanism, dissociation occurs on the lowest potential energy surface for each Cp elimination. Although one photon is energetically sufficient to remove one Cp ligand from ferrocene, RRKM calculations of the lifetime indicate that Cp elimination is extremely slow for dissociation along the ground electronic state potential energy surface. Hence, after internal conversion to the ground electronic state, the large photon absorption cross section (∼4 Å2) for the experimental irradiation conditions allows additional photons to be absorbed until the dissociation rate exceeds the up pumping rate. The large photon energy causes the dissociation rate to increase by many orders of magnitude for each additional photon absorbed. Consequently, there is strong selectivity for the total number of photons absorbed. Both mechanisms, occurring on two different electronic potential energy surfaces, suggest that dissociation induced by excitation of the ligand-to-metal charge transfer states accessed at 193 nm can be quantitatively described as a statistical, unimolecular decomposition. At 248 nm, the measured product velocity distributions are qualitatively consistent with the mechanism deduced from the 193 nm results, but the energy available for translation at this wavelength is too small to extract quantitative product translational energy distributions which are required to independently test the applicability of the statistical dissociation model.