Internal Energy Distributions of OH Products in the Reaction of O(³P_J) with HSiCl₃

The OH($X^2{\Pi},\;{\nu}$"=0, 1) internal state distributions from the reaction of electronically ground state oxygen atoms with HSi$Cl_3$ were measured using laser-induced fluorescence. The ground-state O$(^3P_J)$ atoms with kinetic energies above the reaction barrier were produced by photolysis of N$O_2$ at 355 nm. The OH product revealed strong vibrational population inversion, P(${\nu}$"=1)/P(${\nu}$"=0) = 4.0 ${\pm}$ 0.6, and rotational distributions in both vibrational states exhibit substantial rotational excitations to the limit of total available energy. However, no preferential populations in either of the two $\Lambda$ doublet states were observed from the micropopulations, which supports a mechanism involving a direct abstraction of hydrogen by the atomic oxygen. It was also found that the collision energy between O and HSi$Cl_3$ is effectively coupled into the excitation of the internal degrees of freedom of the OH product ($<f_{vib}>$ = 0.62, and $<\;f_{rot}>$ = 0.20). The dynamics appear consistent with expectations for the kinematically constrained reaction which supports the reaction type, heavy + light-heavy $\rightarrow$ heavy-light + heavy (H + LH′ $\rightarrow$ HL + H′). The dynamics of oxygen atom collision with HSi$Cl_3$ are discussed in comparison to those with Si$H_4$.