Photodissociation of FONO: an excited state nonadiabatic dynamics study

The photo dissociation of nitrosyl fluorite, FONO, a potential source of atmospheric fluorine, underlies its active role in ozone depletion and other activities in the troposphere. In the present work, the electronic structure of FONO is revisited at high level of ab initio and density functional theory (DFT) theoretical levels. Several different post SCF methods were used to compute excited states, vertical excitation energies and intensities, namely configuration interaction with single excitations (CIS), equation of motion coupled cluster with single and double excitations (EOM-CCSD), and symmetry adopted cluster configuration interaction (SAC-CI) methods. The potential energy functions along two internal coordinates, namely the F-ONO bond and the FONO dihedral angle, have been computed on the ground state relaxed potential energy surface (PES) for the ground, 5A' and 5A″ excited states using the EOM-CCSD method. In the gas phase, the decay of the excited states of FONO was examined closely by calculating the UV photoabsorption cross-section spectrum and by nonadiabatic dynamics simulations. Nonadiabatic dynamics were simulated by sampling 300 trajectories in two spectral windows at 3.0 ± 0.25 and 4.5 ± 0.25 eV using the surface hopping method. Two different photodissociation reaction pathways with two main products, including multifragmentation (FO+NO) and atomic elimination (F) mechanisms were identified. For the cis-isomer, the main photochemical channel is F+NO₂, representing 67% of all processes. For the trans-isomer, however, the main dissociation pathway is (FO+NO). Graphical Abstract Photodisscociation of nitrosyl fluorite (FONO) seems to underlie its active role in ozone depletion and other activities in the troposphere. The present research revisits the electronic structure of FONO at high level of ab initio and DFT theoretical levels. Cis-trans isomerization and dissociation in the ground and low lying excited states were examined. Photoabsorption cross-section spectra were computed and nonadiabatic dynamics were launched for both cis and trans FONO isomers.