10min:
TIME RESOLVED INFRARED EMISSION FROM VIBRATIONAL EXCITED ACETYLENE FOLLOWING SUPER ENERGY TRANSFER COLLISIONS WITH HOT HYDROGEN.

J. M. SMITH, M. NIKOW, J. MA AND H. L. DAI, Department of Chemistry, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA.

Can a molecule be activated with large amounts of energy transferred in a single collision between an atom and a molecule? If so, this type of collision will greatly affect molecular reactivity and equilibrium in systems including combustion where abundant hot atoms exist. Conventional expectation of translation to vibration (T-V) energy transfer is that probability decreases exponentially with energy transferred. We show, however, that in collisions between a pair of atom/molecule for which chemical reactions may occur, such as between a hyperthermal H atom and an ambient acetylene molecule, (T-V) energy transfer occurs with surprisingly high efficiency through chemical complex formation. Time-resolved infrared emission observations reveal that collisions between H atoms moving with ~60 kcal/mole energy and acetylene molecules result in transfer of up to 70% of this energy into vibrational degrees of freedom. These experimental results are further supported by state of the art quasi-classical trajectory calculations performed by Bowman and coworkers.