Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol.113, No.3, 971-978, 2000
Photodissociation of cyclic HF complexes: Pentamer through heptamer
Photofragment angular and final rotational state distributions have been measured, corresponding to the vibrational predissociation of HF polymers [(HF)(N) N=5-7]. The present experiments confirm the theoretical prediction that, for clusters in this size range, the only open dissociation channel corresponds to the "evaporation" of a single HF monomer. The pump-probe experiments reported here indicate that the resulting HF monomer is produced with only modest rotational excitation. Rotational temperatures of 180 and 140 K have been determined for the evaporated HF monomer following dissociation of the HF pentamer and hexamer, respectively. Energy conservation in these photodissociation studies provides upper limits for the dissociation energies (D-0), namely, 2941 cm(-1) and 2854 cm(-1) for the pentamer and hexamer, respectively.