Vacuum ultraviolet Radiolysis

Enhancement of the total butene yield is observed when various additives whose ionization potential falls below about 9.4 e.v. are present during ethylene radiolysis (35). This is consistent with the above interpretation (Figure 2). In the vacuum ultraviolet photolysis of cyclobutane the yield of butenes varies with the ionization potential of the additives in the same way as observed here (12). The maximum enhancement corresponds closely to the yield of C4H8+, as expected from our mechanism. 

On the other hand, the formation of ethylene was ascribed mainly to the unimolecular decomposition of a neutral excited propane molecule. These interpretations were later confirmed (4) by examining the effect of an applied electrical field on the neutral products in the radiolysis of propane. The yields of those products which were originally ascribed to ion-molecule reactions remained unchanged when the field strength was increased in the saturation current region while the yields of hydrocarbon products, which were ascribed to the decomposition of neutral excited propane molecules, increased several fold because of increased excitation by electron impact. In various recent radiolysis 14,17,18,34) and photoionization studies 26) of hydrocarbons, the origins of products from ion-molecule reactions or neutral excited molecule decompositions have been determined using the applied field technique. However, because of recent advances in vacuum ultraviolet photolysis and ion-molecule reaction kinetics, the technique used in the above studies has become somewhat superfluous. 

The isomerization of o-xylene in liquid-phase radiolysis, as well as in vapor-phase photolysis either at 2537 A. (17) or in the vacuum ultraviolet (13), gives a very high ratio of meta to para isomer. The more nearly statistical distribution of isomers observed in the vapor-phase radiolysis may again be rationalized in terms of an ionic process. Mass spectral studies (4) of isotopically labeled p-xylene indicate extensive randomization of carbon atoms in the abundant C8H9+ ion. It is not known whether such randomization ocurs in the parent ion or whether randomized ions could revert to xylenes, but the rearomatization of a randomized species has been demonstrated (19) in the radiolysis of toluene-7-14C vapor. 

Several recent publications indicate that the role of intermediate complexes in ionic reactions is still controversial (21, 24, 25). Our interest in this and earlier observations of persistent complexes in alkyl halides already mentioned prompted us to study ionic reactions in ethyl chloride. The previously noted mass spectrometric investigations of alkyl halides did not include the chlorides, and radiolytic studies of these compounds have been limited to the propyl and butyl chlorides which apparently isomerize (39). The present investigation consists of two phases. In the initial phase, the ion-molecule reactions for ethyl chloride were probed by the sensitive mass spectrometric methods which we have applied in recent studies of a similar nature (3,12, 28, 43). In the latter part of this study, the gas-phase radiolysis and vacuum-ultraviolet photolysis of ethyl chloride have been studied to identify those products which arise from ionic precursors. More specifically, we wished to define the behavior under radiolytic conditions of those intermediate ionic species which the spectrometric studies suggested were important, and we hoped to arrive at a reasonable conciliation of the ionic reaction information derived from these different but complementary techniques. 

Table IV gives the relative product distribution from the vacuum ultraviolet photolysis of ethyl chloride at 40 mm. pressure using the 1236-A. krypton resonance line. Owing to the low intensity of emission from the resonance lamp, higher pressures were not used in the photolysis experiments in order to prevent the major portion of the reaction from occurring in the region of the window where surface interactions are likely. Therefore, to provide a basis for more direct comparison between the photolytic and radiolytic yields, the radiolysis of ethyl chloride was also examined at 40 mm. pressure. The relative yields from several experiments of the latter study are given in Table IV. The lowest conversion yields from the radiolysis at the lower pressure show a relative distribution which is in close agreement with the relative product distribution detected from the radiolysis at 357 mm. Therefore, there is no substantial pressure effect on the decomposition product yields in ethyl chloride over the range 40-357 mm.

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