Quantum Diffusion-Controlled Chemistry: Reactions of Atomic Hydrogen with Nitric Oxide in Solid Parahydrogen

Our group has been working to develop parahydrogen (pH2) matrix isolation spectroscopy as a method to study low-temperature condensed-phase reactions of atomic hydrogen with various reaction partners. Guided by the well-defined studies of cold atom chemistry in rare-gas solids, the special properties of quantum hosts such as solid pH2 afford new opportunities to study the analogous chemical reactions under quantum diffusion conditions in hopes of discovering new types of chemical reaction mechanisms. In this study, we present Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic studies of the 193 nm photoinduced chemistry of nitric oxide (NO) isolated in solid pH2 over the 1.8 to 4.3 K temperature range. Upon short-term in situ irradiation the NO readily undergoes photolysis to yield HNO, NOH, NH, NH3, H2O, and H atoms. We map the postphotolysis reactions of mobile H atoms with NO and document first-order growth in HNO and NOH reaction products for up to 5 h after photolysis. We perform three experiments at 4.3 K and one at 1.8 K to permit the temperature dependence of the reaction kinetics to be quantified. We observe Arrhenius-type behavior with a pre-exponential factor of A = 0.036(2) min(-1) and Ea = 2.39(1) cm(-1). This is in sharp contrast to previous H atom reactions we have studied in solid pH2 that display definitively non-Arrhenius behavior. The contrasting temperature dependence measured for the H + NO reaction is likely related to the details of H atom quantum diffusion in solid pH2 and deserves further study.