Picosecond kinetic flash photolysis

Figure 10.8 Picosecond kinetic flash photolysis apparatus...

In the first place, we shall take a look at the recent advances in fast reaction photochemical kinetics and spectroscopy, in particular at picosecond laser flash photolysis and femtosecond observations. Next, photophysics and photochemistry in molecular beams will be considered. Here observations are made under single molecule-single photon conditions, and these experiments provide insight into the most fundamental unimolecular gas phase reactions. 

Chemiluminescence has been used to measure the relative yields of excited ketones formed from self reaction of alkoxyl and alkylperoxyl radical pairs . In the photochemistry of aryl azides a dehydroazepine is detected by time resolved infra red spectroscopy and flash photolysis at room temperature . Singlet and triplet nitrenes and dehydroazepenes have also been detected in the photochemistry of 3- and 4-nitrophenyl azides . Picosecond and nanosecond laser photolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate in aqueous media produces a triplet state of the -nitrobenzylanion and CO2 after cleavage of the rnr triplet. Absorption, emission, and reaction kinetics of dimethylsilylene produced by flash photolyses of dodecamethylcycloherasilane is another interesting study 2,... 

Figure 2.18. (a) Transient absorption spectra observed at 40 ps before and 20 and 150 ps after the laser flash during two-color two-laser flash photolysis of 4T in toluene employing a nanosecond YAG laser (355 nm, FWHM 5 ns, 7 mJ pulse-1) and a picosecond YAG laser (532 nm, FWHM 30 ps, 21 mJ pulse-1), (b) Difference spectra of transient absorption spectra at 20 and 150 ps. (c) Kinetic traces of AO.D. at 650 and 600 nm. Thick lines are fitted curves. 

Microcrystalline benzophenone [38] and benzil [16] were two of the first systems studied by nanosecond diffuse reflectance flash photolysis. Both samples gave transient absorptions which were positively identified as triplet-triplet absorptions. In the case of benzophenone an absorption, centred at 540 nm, was obsejrved which has, within experimental error, identical kinetics to the phosphorescence decay, which is predominantly second order. In the case of benzil a transient absorption of 60% at 510 nm was observed after 354 nm excitation. The assignment as triplet-triplet absorption was made on the basis of the absorption and phosphorescence kinetics being virtually identical, namely a mixture of first and second order kinetics. Ikeda et al [39] have also studied microcrystalline benzophenone on the picosecond time scale. Another microcrystalline sample studied is 1,5-diphenyl-3-styryl-2-pyrazoline, in which the triplet-triplet transient absorption was identified within the microsecond time domain [15] (see figure 7(b)). However, as mentioned above (see section 4 and figure 5), the transient absorption due to the excited singlet state has been observed on a picosecond time domain [17]. 

Kobayashi et al. [86] studied (4-dimethylamino)phenyl azide by means of laser flash photolysis on a picosecond time scale. They found that the triplet nitrene is formed from an unobserved precursor that has a lifetime of approximately 120ps. By consideration of model compounds, these workers suggested that the precursor is the singlet nitrene, but this conclusion must await confirmation by alternative experiments. However, in this work Kobayashi was able to show that triplet (4-dimethylamino)phenyl nitrene reacts to form the (4-dimethylamino)azobenzene by a kinetically second-order process. 

The conditions which determine whether flash photolysis can be used to smdy a given chemical system are (i) a precursor of the species of kinetic interest has to absorb light (normally from a pulsed laser) (ii) this species is produced on a timescale that is short relative to its lifetime in the system. Current technical developments make it easy to study timescales of nanoseconds for production and analysis of species, and the use of instrumentation with time resolution of picoseconds is already fairly common. In certain specific cases, as we will see in the last part of this chapter, it is possible to study processes on timescales greater than a few femtoseconds. Once the species of interest has been produced, it is necessary to use an appropriate rapid detection method. The most common technique involves transient optical absorption spectroscopy. In addition, luminescence has been frequently used to detect transients, and other methods such as time-resolved resonance Raman spectroscopy and electrical conductivity have provided valuable information in certain cases. 

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