A crossed laser-molecular beam study of the photodissociation dynamics of Fe(CO)5 at 193 nm

Abstract

A crossed laser-molecular beam study of the photodissociation mechanism of Fe(CO)5 has been performed at 193 nm where time-of-flight measurements of the primary iron containing photofragments have been recorded under collision free conditions. The center-of-mass velocity distributions derived from the TOF data by the method of moments show that Fe(CO)2 accounts for >99% of all photoproducts formed after absorption of one photon. The only mechanism which quantitatively reproduces the measured velocity distributions is a sequence of three, uncorrelated, statistical CO eliminations. At high photon flux, a second photon can be absorbed by the Fe(CO)2 photofragment which decomposes by an uncorrelated sequential elimination of the remaining two CO ligands.