Observation of the Carbon Elimination Channel in Vacuum Ultraviolet Photodissociation of OCS

Abstract

The textbook mechanism for OCS photodissociation mainly involves the CO + S or CS + O product channel via a single bond fission. However, a third dissociation channel concerning the cleavage of both C–S and C–O bonds yielding SO + C products, though thermodynamically allowed, has never been verified experimentally to date. By using a tunable vacuum ultraviolet laser light and time-sliced velocity map ion imaging technique, we have clearly observed the SO(X3Σ–) + C(3PJ=0) products as the vacuum ultraviolet laser photon energy gradually exceeds its thermodynamic threshold. The corresponding SO(X3Σ–) coproducts are highly vibrationally excited and show varying angular distributions from isotropic to anisotropic as the excitation photon energy increases. Theoretical analysis suggests that a fast nonadiabatic pathway plays a dominant role in the formation of the anisotropic SO products. That isotropic products arise as the excitation photon energies approach the thermodynamic threshold can be reasonably explained by the “roaming mechanism”.