The vacuum ultraviolet photolysis of hydrogen chloride. The role of the hot hydrogen atoms

Abstract

The VuV photolysis of HCI has been performed in the presence of chlorine as an H atom scavcnger. Nitrogen and argon were used as moderators.It has been shown that H atoms react mainly while hot even at the five-fold excess of the moderator. The ratio of the thermalization rate constants for nitrogen and argon has been determined to be 3.0 which agrees with the supposition that inelastic collisions play an important role when the molecular moderators are used.The relative rate constant for reaction of both hot and thermal hydrogen atoms with C12 and HCI as well as the effective energy loss per collision has been obtained.The results are well consistent with the Wolfgang's hot atoms theory.