Further aspects of the roaming mechanism in formaldehyde dissociation

Recently we reported a novel “roaming” dissociation pathway of formaldehyde in which one of the H atoms strays far from the minimum energy reaction path, explores a broad region of the potential energy surface, then abstracts the remaining H atom to form molecular products, without going near the configuration of the conventional transition state saddle point. The detailed dynamics of the abstraction mechanism and its energy dependence have already been reported. Here, with a combination of experimental and theoretical results, we examine the roaming behavior at the energetic extremes. We show evidence of roaming below the threshold of the radical dissociation channel and consider the implications of this and the possible existence of a transition state for the roaming mechanism. We also show the occurrence of roaming up to 3200 cm⁻¹ above the threshold of the triplet dissociation channel. In addition, we present results affording deeper insight into the dynamics of the roaming mechanism: we show evidence of roaming leading to CO in v = 1, and examine the issue of nuclear spin conservation during dissociation via the roaming mechanism.