Femtosecond probing of photodissociation dynamics in acyl cyanides

Abstract

The photodissociation of two acyl cyanide compounds, R–C(O)–CN, where R=methyl and tert-butyl groups, has been investigated using femtosecond time-resolved laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) spectroscopy. Both compounds were excited by two-photon excitation at a total energy of ∼6.4 eV and the formation of the free CN(X) radical products was probed in real time by monitoring the CN X→B LIF signal. The results revealed that the temporal evolution of the CN(X) formation can be well characterized by delayed biexponential rise functions with time constants in the picosecond time scale, indicating that the dissociation occurs via a complex-mode mechanism. We proposed a dissociation mechanism involving two discernable stages to account for the observed temporal behaviors as well as previous photofragment translational spectroscopic results reported by other groups. Our analyses suggested that the selectivity between the C–CN and C–R bond cleavage is determined by the competition between the adiabatic and nonadiabatic dynamics of the S2 state. The results also indicated that the adiabatic dissociation process occurring on the S2 surface is not statistical. We speculate that this nonstatistical dissociation behavior is due to an initial nonuniform phase space distribution and a slow intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution process that prevents the system from sampling the entire phase space before the reaction completes.