Alkylation Effects on the Energy Transfer of Highly Vibrationally Excited Naphthalene

The energy transfer of highly vibrationally excited isomers of dimethylnaphthalene and 2‐ethylnaphthalene in collisions with krypton were investigated using crossed molecular beam/time‐of‐flight mass spectrometer/time‐sliced velocity map ion imaging techniques at a collision energy of approximately 300 cm^?1. Angular‐resolved energy‐transfer distribution functions were obtained directly from the images of inelastic scattering. The results show that alkyl‐substituted naphthalenes transfer more vibrational energy to translational energy than unsubstituted naphthalene. Alkylation enhances the V→T energy transfer in the range ?ΔE_d=?100～?1500 cm^?1 by approximately a factor of 2. However, the maximum values of V→T energy transfer for alkyl‐substituted naphthalenes are about 1500～2000 cm^?1, which is similar to that of naphthalene. The lack of rotation‐like wide‐angle motion of the aromatic ring and no enhancement in very large V→T energy transfer, like supercollisions, indicates that very large V→T energy transfer requires special vibrational motions. This transfer cannot be achieved by the low‐frequency vibrational motions of alkyl groups.     

Effect of Supercollisions on Energy Transfer in Mixtures of Bath Gases and Laser Excited Complex Molecules

Intensities and decay rates of delayed luminescence (DL) initiated by a pulse of N₂ laser were employed to probe collisional relaxation of complex molecules (benzophenone, acetophenone) diluted with bath gases Ar, Kr, Xe, C₂H₄, SF₆, C₅H₁₂. It was shown that vibrational relaxation can be interpreted in terms of two consecutive processes: vibration-vibration (V-V) and vibration-translation (V-T). The results clearly demonstrated that fast component of DL can be used to study V-V energy transfer. It was found that at relatively small internal energy the collisional efficiences of V-V process had the values typical for molecular processes in which supercollisions contribute. The average energies transferred per collision, (ΔE), well correlated with predictions of the simple ergodic collision theory of intermolecular energy transfer.