Vibrational relaxation and electronic mutation of metastable nitrogen molecules generated by nitrogen atom recombination on cobalt and nickel

Abstract

The recombination of nitrogen atoms on polycrystalline samples of cobalt and nickel produces metastable electronically excited nitrogen molecules, probably N 2(W 3Δ u), which are collisionally transferred to the N 2(B 3Πg) state. Information about vibrational relaxation of the metastable state by N 2(X 1Σ + g) is inferred from composition dependent changes in the observed first positive emission spectrum [N 29A 3Σ + g)−N 2(B 3Π g] with the aid of multilevel, steady-state, kinetic model.