Total fragmentation of SbCl3 by multiphoton dissociation in the UV Original Research Article

UV-multiphoton dissociation of SbCl3 in the gas phase is studied by monitoring the emission spectra of the resulting excited atomic fragment Sb by means of an optical multichannel analyzer (OMA). The relative fluorescence intensities arising from different atomic states allow us to calculate the population of a subensemble of Sb∗ states produced upon photodissociation by a frequency doubled tuneable pulsed dye laser. For the range of 206–240 nm of the dissociation wavelength the spectral analysis shows that the photodissociation is a three-photon process and that the population of excited Sb states (43 000–50 000 cm−1) follows a Boltzmann distribution with temperatures from 1100 to 2000 K increasing monotonically with increasing photon energy for dissociation. This result on SbCl3 confirms earlier observations for SbBr3 where such behaviour was found for two- and three-photon dissociation in the same UV range.