Femtochemistry of organometallics: dynamics of metal-metal and metal-ligand bond cleavage in M2(CO)10

We report femtochemical studies of the organometallic dimetal decacarbonyl. By the use of mass spectrometry, we obtain the temporal dynamics in the channels for metal-metal and metal-ligand bond cleavage. The time scale observed for cleavage and for structural bridging indicates the nature of the repulsion along the two reaction coordinates and the interplay between the bond order and the femtosecond dynamics.