Femtochemistry of ICN in liquids: Dynamics of dissociation, recombination and abstraction

The femtosecond reaction dynamics of ICN in the liquids CHCl3, CH2Cl3, and CDCl3 are reported. As in gas phase studies, we probed the dynamics of bond breakage and rotational alignment, but now in the presence of the solvent structure. Furthermore, we observed the subsequent process of solvent-induced atom-diatom recombination and examined its role in the overall mechanism of hydrogen (and chlorine) abstraction reaction. The elementary dynamics in these liquid solutions, and for two different states of the reaction (CN + I and CN + I*), are compared with molecular dynamics simulations, which provide a remarkably good microscopic picture of the different femtochemical steps.