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 elu

SUBMITTER: Yang CH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8159351 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature