ESR studies of irradiated methane and ethane at 4.2 K and mechanism of pairwise trapping of radicals in irradiated alkanes

The spatial distributions of trapped hydrogen atoms and methyl radicals in CH4 and CD4 irradiated at 4.2 K have been studied by ESR. Most of the hydrogen atoms are trapped within ∼16 Å from each parent methyl radical forming distributed radical pairs. This indicates that the thermalization distance of hydrogen atoms produced by 4.2 K radiolysis is ≲16 Å in methane. Evidence has been obtained for the formation of a small amount of ĊH3...ĊH3 pairs, which are supposedly formed from hot hydrogen atom reactions. No evidence has been obtained for the formation of a pair of hydrogen atoms. There has been also obtained the experimental evidence that thermal hydrogen atoms unreactive with methane can abstract a hydrogen atom from ethane at 10–20 K. In the light of these results, the following conclusions are deduced: A part of hydrogen atoms produced in radiolysis of alkanes undergo hot abstraction to form very close alkyl radical pairs whereas the rest is thermalized and immobilized at the place close to each parent alkyl radical. The thermalized hydrogen atoms also abstract a hydrogen atom from the surrounding molecules to form distributed alkyl radical pairs, when the matrix molecule is reactive with thermal hydrogen atoms. On the other hand, the hydrogen atoms are mobile at elevated temperatures and the isolated alkyl radicals are mainly formed.