The dynamics of the photolysis of alkyl nitrites from a dielectric surface. A comparison with gas phase results

The alkyl nitrites, tert-butyl nitrite and iso-butyl nitrite have been photolysed at 351 nm on a dielectric surface. This involves excitation to the A 1A″ state with two quanta in the localized NO stretching mode of iso-butyl nitrite and three quanta in the case of tert-butyl nitrite. The vibrational, rotational and translational energy distributions of the NO product are compared with the results of previous gas phase work. The vibrational distributions mimic those in the gas phase, but the rotational distributions do not do so.