Reaction dynamics of Al + CO₂ → AlO + CO studied by a crossed-beam velocity map imaging technique

The oxidation reaction of a gas-phase aluminum atom by a carbon dioxide molecule was studied by employing a crossed-beam technique at two collision energies: 27.9 and 52.8 kJ/mol. A (1 + 1) resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization via the D²Σ⁺-X²Σ⁺ transition of AlO was applied to ionize the product. For several rotational levels of AlO in the vibrational ground state, time-sliced ion images were measured for the first time, and the angular-kinetic energy distributions were determined. All angular distributions showed forward and backward peaks; the forward peaks were more pronounced than the backward ones at the two collision energies. The product kinetic energy showed rather narrow distributions whose peaks appeared at near to the highest limit estimated from the available energies. The rotational distributions of the counter product CO, derived from the kinetic energy distributions, suggested that only a limited number of rotational states were formed and that a small amount of energies go into this mode. These results suggested that the reaction proceeds via a short-lived intermediate in which the O-C-O keeps a nearly linear structure.