Laser reactions

When a laser is used as a source of heat, the bonds in the molecules that absorb the radiation increase their vibrational enei. The intensity of radiation absorbed follows the Beer Lambert law  

When the absorption of radiation is coupled to the reactant gas, the reaction kinetics are related to the radiation profile within the reactor, which in most cases is very complex and yields a complicated reaction profile. When the reactant molecules are the molecules that absorb the radiation, the molecular vibrations lead to (1) a decomposition that is analogous to a thermal decomposition, written as 

For the case of laser induced decomposition reactions, production rate of D is given by 

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From the point of view of associative desorption, this reaction is an early barrier reaction. That is, the transition state resembles the reactants.46 Early barrier reactions are well known to channel large amounts of the reaction exoergicity into product vibration. For example, the famous chemical-laser reaction, F + H2 — HF(u) + H, is such a reaction producing a highly inverted HF vibrational distribution.47-50 Luntz and co-workers carried out classical trajectory calculation on the Born-Oppenheimer potential energy surface of Fig. 3(c) and found indeed that the properties of this early barrier reaction do include an inverted N2 vibrational distribution that peaks near v = 6 and extends to v = 11 (see Fig. 3(a)). In marked contrast to these theoretical predictions, the experimentally observed N2 vibrational distribution shown in Fig. 3(d) is skewed towards low values of v. The authors of Ref. 44 also employed the electronic friction theory of Tully and Head-Gordon35 in an attempt to model electronically nonadiabatic influences to the reaction. The results of these calculations are shown in... 

The most notable feature of these intrazeolite photooxygenations (Fig. 30) is that the oxygen CT band experiences a dramatic bathochromic shift in comparison to solution. This was detected initially by recording the product growth as a function of irradiation wavelength (laser reaction excitation spectrum)98,110 and was later verified by direct observation using diffuse reflectance UV-Vis spectroscopy.111 For example, 2,3-dimethyl-2-butene CT-absorbance is shifted to lower energy by more than 300 nm... 

The list of unsuccessful attempts to find new chemical laser reactions is very long and will not be discussed in detail here. The reader is referred to the discussion of prospects at the first chemical laser conference which appeared as a supplement to Applied Optics 32>. A new approach of a more general nature is the photorecombination laser first suggested by R. A. Young 85> as early as 1964 and treated in detail by Kochelap and Pekar 86>. In describing this principle, we follow in part the argument of A. N. Oraevskii 87>. A number of chemical processes give rise to the emission of a photon such that this emission is not a consequence but a necessary condition of the elementary act. 

Figure 5.10 Experimental set-up of an overtone experiment showing the intracavity sample cell with a cw dye laser. Reaction products are analyzed by gas chromatography. Taken with permission from Reddy and Berry (1977).

Vibrational Spectroscopy. Infrared absorption spectra may be obtained using convention IR or FTIR instrumentation the catalyst may be present as a compressed disk, allowing transmission spectroscopy. If the surface area is high, there can be enough chemisorbed species for their spectra to be recorded. This approach is widely used to follow actual catalyzed reactions see, for example. Refs. 26 (metal oxide catalysts) and 27 (zeolitic catalysts). Diffuse reflectance infrared reflection spectroscopy (DRIFT S) may be used on films [e.g.. Ref. 28—Si02 films on Mo(llO)]. Laser Raman spectroscopy (e.g.. Refs. 29, 30) and infrared emission spectroscopy may give greater detail [31]. 

The existence of the polyad number as a bottleneck to energy flow on short time scales is potentially important for efforts to control molecnlar reactivity rising advanced laser techniqnes, discussed below in section Al.2.20. Efforts at control seek to intervene in the molecnlar dynamics to prevent the effects of widespread vibrational energy flow, the presence of which is one of the key assumptions of Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel-Marcns (RRKM) and other theories of reaction dynamics [6]. 

The various approaches to laser control of chemical reactions have been discussed in detail in several recent reviews [64. 65],... 

Shapiro M and Brumer P 1986 Laser control of product quantum state populations in unimolecular reactions J. Chem. Phys. 84 4103... 

Shapiro M and Brumer P 1989 Coherent chemistry—Controlling chemical reactions with lasers Acc. Chem. Res. 22 407... 

Assion A, Baumert T, Bergt M, Brixner T, Kiefer B, Seyfried V, Strehle M and Gerber G 1998 Control of chemical reactions by feedback-optimized phase-shaped femtosecond laser pulses Sc/e/ ce 282 919... 

Recently, in situ studies of catalytic surface chemical reactions at high pressures have been undertaken [46, 47]. These studies employed sum frequency generation (SFG) and STM in order to probe the surfaces as the reactions are occurring under conditions similar to those employed for industrial catalysis (SFG is a laser-based teclmique that is described in section A 1.7.5.5 and section BT22). These studies have shown that the highly stable adsorbate sites that are probed under vacuum conditions are not necessarily tlie same sites that are active in high-pressure catalysis. Instead, less stable sites that are only occupied at high pressures are often responsible for catalysis. Because the active... 

Surface photochemistry can drive a surface chemical reaction in the presence of laser irradiation that would not otherwise occur. The types of excitations that initiate surface photochemistry can be roughly divided into those that occur due to direct excitations of the adsorbates and those that are mediated by the substrate. In a direct excitation, the adsorbed molecules are excited by the laser light, and will directly convert into products, much as they would in the gas phase. In substrate-mediated processes, however, the laser light acts to excite electrons from the substrate, which are often referred to as hot electrons . These hot electrons then interact with the adsorbates to initiate a chemical reaction. 

Femtosecond lasers represent the state-of-the-art in laser teclmology. These lasers can have pulse widths of the order of 100 fm s. This is the same time scale as many processes that occur on surfaces, such as desorption or diffusion. Thus, femtosecond lasers can be used to directly measure surface dynamics tlirough teclmiques such as two-photon photoemission [85]. Femtochemistry occurs when the laser imparts energy over an extremely short time period so as to directly induce a surface chemical reaction [86]. 

PES of neutral molecules to give positive ions is a much older field [ ]. The infomiation is valuable to chemists because it tells one about unoccupied orbitals m the neutral that may become occupied in chemical reactions. Since UV light is needed to ionize neutrals, UV lamps and syncln-otron radiation have been used as well as UV laser light. With suitable electron-energy resolution, vibrational states of the positive ions can be... 

According to Kramers model, for flat barrier tops associated with predominantly small barriers, the transition from the low- to the high-damping regime is expected to occur in low-density fluids. This expectation is home out by an extensively studied model reaction, the photoisomerization of tran.s-stilbene and similar compounds [70, 71] involving a small energy barrier in the first excited singlet state whose decay after photoexcitation is directly related to the rate coefficient of tran.s-c/.s-photoisomerization and can be conveniently measured by ultrafast laser spectroscopic teclmiques. 

Hamilton C E, Bierbaum V M and Leone S R 1985 Product vibrational state distributions of thermal energy charge transfer reactions determined by laser-induced fluorescence in a flowing afterglow Ar" + CC -> CC (v= 0-6) + Ar J. Chem. Rhys. 83 2284-92... 

Sonnenfroh D M and Leone S R 1989 A laser-induced fluorescence study of product rotational state distributions in the charge transfer reaction Ar <-i. i, ) + Ni Ar + MfXjat 0.28 and 0.40 eV J. them. Phys. 90 1677-85... 

Lee Y-Y, Leone S R, Champkin P, Kaltoyannis N and Price S D 1997 Laser photofragmentation and coiiision-induced reactions of sit and siH - Chem. Phys. 106 7981-94... 

For very fast reactions, as they are accessible to investigation by pico- and femtosecond laser spectroscopy, the separation of time scales into slow motion along the reaction path and fast relaxation of other degrees of freedom in most cases is no longer possible and it is necessary to consider dynamical models, which are not the topic of this section. But often the temperature, solvent or pressure dependence of reaction rate... 

However, with the advent of lasers, the teclmique of laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) has probably become the single most popular means of detennining product-state distributions an early example is the work by Zare and co-workers on Ba + FLT (X= F, Cl, Br, I) reactions [25]. Here, a tunable laser excites an electronic transition of one of the products (the BaX product in this example), and the total fluorescence is detected as a... 

The first mfonnation on the HE vibrational distribution was obtained in two landmark studies by Pimentel [39] and Polanyi [24] in 1969 both studies showed extensive vibrational excitation of the HE product. Pimental found that tire F + H2 reaction could pump an infrared chemical laser, i.e. the vibrational distribution was inverted, with the HF(u = 2) population higher than that for the HF(u = 1) level. A more complete picture was obtained by Polanyi by measuring and spectrally analysing tlie spontaneous emission from vibrationally excited HE produced by the reaction. This infrared chemiluminescence experiment yielded relative populations of 0.29, 1 and 0.47 for the HF(u =1,2 and 3)... 

Flowever, in order to deliver on its promise and maximize its impact on the broader field of chemistry, the methodology of reaction dynamics must be extended toward more complex reactions involving polyatomic molecules and radicals for which even the primary products may not be known. There certainly have been examples of this notably the crossed molecular beams work by Lee [59] on the reactions of O atoms with a series of hydrocarbons. In such cases the spectroscopy of the products is often too complicated to investigate using laser-based techniques, but the recent marriage of intense syncluotron radiation light sources with state-of-the-art scattering instruments holds considerable promise for the elucidation of the bimolecular and photodissociation dynamics of these more complex species. 

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