Issue 25, 2020

Real-time tracking of the entangled pathways in the multichannel photodissociation of acetaldehyde

Abstract

The roaming mechanism, an unconventional reaction path, was discovered more than a decade ago in the studies of formaldehyde photodissociation, H2CO → H2 + CO. Since then, observations of roaming have been claimed in numerous photochemical processes. A closer examination of the presented data, however, revealed that evidence for roaming is not always unequivocal, and some of the conclusions could be misleading. We report here an in-depth, joint experimental and theoretical study of the title reaction. By tracking the time-evolution of the pair-correlated product state distributions, we decipher the competing, interwoven reaction pathways that lead to the radical (CH3 + HCO) and molecular (CH4 + CO) products. Possible roaming pathways are then elucidated and a more precise descriptor of the phenomenon is delineated.

Graphical abstract: Real-time tracking of the entangled pathways in the multichannel photodissociation of acetaldehyde

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
05 Janv. 2020
Accepted
30 Janv. 2020
First published
26 Febr. 2020
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 6423-6430

Real-time tracking of the entangled pathways in the multichannel photodissociation of acetaldehyde

C. Yang, S. Bhattacharyya, L. Liu, W. Fang and K. Liu, Chem. Sci., 2020, 11, 6423 DOI: 10.1039/D0SC00063A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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