ArF Laser Photoproduction and Sensitive Detection of Carbon Atoms from Simple Fuel Molecules

摘要

Excimer lasers are currently being used as a means of photofragmentation and fragment excitation for chemical detection purposes, as well as for activation of reactive mixtures. In the case of small fuel molecules, this phenomenon is generally poorly understood and needs to be studied further. This report, therefore, describes experiments aimed at a better understanding of the interaction of simple carbon-containing fuel molecules with the ArF excimer laser, particularly with respect to potential analytical applications. Such an application, for instance, would be for a gas chromatographic detector of propellant pyrolysis products. Specifically, in this report we describe experiments where carbon atoms were generated by multiphoton photolysis of CO, CH4, C22, C3H8, CH3OH and CH3COCH3 using the ArF (193 nm) laser.