A New Laser Photochemical Process for Isotope Enrichment

Selective laser excitation of a specific isotopic species to its lowest electronic singlet (S₁) and triplet (T₁) states respectively, then followed by a chemical reaction for isotope separation is examined theoretically. It is found that the direct excitation to T₁ state from ground state (S₀) is an unique excitation channel for obtaining a controllable chemical reaction and for achieving a high isotope separation factor. This is due to the following important facts: 1) Resonant energy transfer from a selectively excited triplet isotopic species to an unexcited species of the other isotope present in the mixture is missing (or is very small); 2) The lifetime of the T₁ state is normally longer than that of the S₁ state; 3) There is no intersystem crossing channel that exists for the deactivation of excited isotopic species from T₁ state.

Numerical calculation is performed for the chlorine isotope separation in a mixture of thiophosgene (0.5 torr) and diethoxyethylene (1.5 torr). The result indicates that the isotopic enrichment factor is at least 2.5 × 10³ times larger for selective T₁ excitation than that for S₁ excitation.