Competing C–Br and O–NO Photofission upon Excitation of BrCH2CH2ONO at 193 nm

This study characterizes two of the primary photodissociation channels of 2-bromoethyl nitrite, BrCH2CH2ONO, at 193 nm and the subsequent unimolecular dissociation channels of the nascent vibrationally excited BrCH2CH2O radicals produced from the O–NO bond photofission. We use a crossed laser-molecular beam scattering apparatus with electron bombardment detection. Upon photodissociation of BrCH2CH2ONO at 193 nm, the measured branching ratio between primary O–NO photofission and C–Br photofission is 3.9:1 (O–NO/C–Br). The measured O–NO photofission recoil kinetic energy distribution (P(E T)) peaks near 30 kcal/mol and extends from 20 to 50 kcal/mol. We use the O–NO photofission P(E T) to characterize the internal energy distribution in the nascent ground-electronic-state BrCH2CH2O radicals. At 193 nm, all of the BrCH2CH2O radicals are formed with enough internal energy to unimolecularly dissociate to CH2Br + H2CO or to BrCH2CHO + H. We also investigated the possibility of the BrCH2CH2O → CH2CHO + HBr reaction arising from the vibrationally excited BrCH2CH2O radicals produced from O–NO primary photodissociation. Signal strengths at HBr+, however, demonstrate that the vinoxy product does not have HBr as a cofragment, so the BrCH2CH2O → HBr + vinoxy channel is negligible compared to the CH2Br + H2CO channel. We also report our computational prediction of the unimolecular dissociation channels of the vibrational excited CH2CH2ONO radical resulting from C–Br bond photofission. Our theoretical calculations on the ground-state CH2CH2ONO potential energy surface at the G4//B3LYP/6-311++G­(3df,2p) level of theory give the energetics of the zero-point corrected minima and transition states. The lowest accessible barrier height for the unimolecular dissociation of CH2CH2ONO is a 12.7 kcal/mol barrier from the cis-ONO conformer, yielding NO2 + ethene. Our measured internal energy distribution of the nascent CH2CH2ONO radicals together with this computational result suggests that the CH2CH2ONO radicals will dissociate to NO2 + ethene, with a small possible branching to NO + oxirane.