The recombination of oxygen atoms with oxygen molecules to form ozone exhibits several strange chemical characteristics, including unusually large differences in formation rate coefficients when different isotopes of oxygen participate. Purely statistical chemical reaction rate theories cannot describe these isotope effects, suggesting that reaction dynamics must play an important role. We investigated the dynamics of the 18O + 32O2 --> O3(*) --> 16O + 34O2 isotope exchange reaction (which proceeds on the same potential energy surface as ozone formation) using crossed atomic and molecular beams at a collision energy of 7.3 kcal mol(-1), providing the first direct experimental evidence that the dissociation of excited ozone exhibits significant nonstatistical behavior. These results are compared with quantum statistical and quasi-classical trajectory calculations in order to gain insight into the potential energy surface and the dynamics of ozone formation.

Two global analytical potential energy surfaces for the HO2(X2A") system have been developed by fitting approximately 15,000 ab initio points at the icMRCI+Qaug-cc-pVQZ level of theory, using the reproducing kernel Hilbert space method. One analytical potential is designed to give a very accurate representation of the low energy range that determines the vibrational spectrum, while the other attempts to provide a fast and uniformly accurate potential function for reaction dynamics. The quality of the fitted potential functions is confirmed by good agreement of the (J=0) HO2 vibrational spectrum and (J=0) quantum reaction probability for the H+O2(ji=0,nui=0) reaction with those obtained using the spline fitted potential. Quasiclassical trajectory calculations carried out on the new potential energy surface provided the reaction probability with a zero impact parameter (b=0), which is in reasonably good agreement with the J=0 quantum results.