344346-58-3Relevant academic research and scientific papers
Femtosecond infrared study of the dynamics of solvation and solvent caging
Yang,Snee,Kotz,Payne,Harris
, p. 4204 - 4210 (2001)
The ultrafast reaction dynamics following 295-nm photodissociation of Re2(CO)1O were studied experimentally with 300-fs time resolution in the reactive, strongly coordinating CCl4 solution and in the inert, weakly coordinating hexane solution. Density-functional theoretical (DFT) and ab initio calculations were used to further characterize the transient intermediates seen in the experiments. It was found that the quantum yield of the Re-Re bond dissociation is governed by geminate recombination on two time scales in CCl4, ～50 and ～500 ps. The recombination dynamics are discussed in terms of solvent caging in which the geminate Re(CO)5 pair has a low probability to escape the first solvent shell in the first few picoseconds after femtosecond photolysis. The other photofragmentation channel resulted in the equatorially solvated dirhenium nonacarbonyl eq-Re2(CO)9(solvent). Theoretical calculations indicated that a structural reorganization energy cost on the order of 6-7 kcal/mol might be required for the unsolvated nonacarbonyl to coordinate to a solvent molecule. These results suggest that for Re(CO)5 the solvent can be treated as a viscous continuum, whereas for the Re2(CO)9 the solvent is best described in molecular terms.
