CROSSED-BEAM STUDIES OF RADICAL REACTION DYNAMICS - CN+O-2-]NCO((X)OVER-TILDE(2)PI)+O

The title reaction has been studied in a crossed molecular beam apparatus. Both the product state distributions and the translation energy dependence of reaction cross sections were measured under single collision conditions. Excellent agreement was found over a wide temperature range (26-3800 K) between rate constants deduced from the translational excitation function and recent thermal kinetic data. The rotational state distribution was found to be very cold compared to the reaction exothermicity, and could be described by a Boltzmann temperature of 110 K for all K-doublet levels. The vibronic state distribution was also found to be cold, with 70% of the products formed in the vibrational ground state. By comparing the molecular beam results for vibronic state distributions with those obtained from recent bulb experiments, it was conjectured that there appears to be a strong correlation between rotation in the reactants and bending excitation in the products.