Infrared Activated Signatures and Jahn-Teller Dynamics of NO-CH

Bimolecular collision outcomes sensitively depend on the chemical functionality and relative orientations of the colliding partners that define the accessible reactive and nonreactive pathways. Accurate predictions from multidimensional potential energy surfaces demand a full characterization of the available mechanisms. Therefore, there is a need for experimental benchmarks to control and characterize the collision conditions with spectroscopic accuracy to accelerate the predictive modeling of chemical reactivity. To this end, the bimolecular collision outcomes can be investigated systematically by preparing reactants in the entrance channel prior to reaction. Herein, we investigate the vibrational spectroscopy and infrared-driven dynamics of the bimolecular collision complex between nitric oxide and methane (NO-CH4). We recorded the vibrational spectroscopy of NO-CH4 in the CH4 asymmetric stretching region using resonant ion-depletion infrared spectroscopy and infrared action spectroscopy, thus revealing a significantly broad spectrum centered at 3030 cm-1 that extends over 50 cm-1. The asymmetric CH stretch feature of NO-CH4 is explained by CH4 internal rotation and attributed to transitions involving three different nuclear spin isomers of CH4. The vibrational spectra also show extensive homogeneous broadening due to the ultrafast vibrational predissociation of NO-CH4. Additionally, we combine infrared activation of NO-CH4 with velocity map imaging of NO (X2Π, ν″ = 0, J″, Fn, Λ) products to develop a molecular-level understanding of the nonreactive collisions of NO with CH4. The anisotropy of the ion image features is largely determined by the probed rotational quantum number of NO (J″) products. For a subset of NO fragments, the ion images and total kinetic energy release (TKER) distributions show an anisotropic component at low relative translation (∼225 cm-1) indicating a prompt dissociation mechanism. However, for other detected NO products, the ion images and TKER distributions are bimodal, in which the anisotropic component is accompanied by an isotropic feature at high relative translation (∼1400 cm-1) signifying a slow dissociation pathway. In addition to the predissociation dynamics following vibrational excitation, the Jahn-Teller dynamics prior to infrared activation need to be considered to fully describe the product spin-orbit distributions. Therefore, we correlate the Jahn-Teller mechanisms of NO-CH4 to the symmetry-restricted NO (X2Π, ν″ = 0, J″, Fn, Λ) + CH4 (ν″) product outcomes.