Kinetics Following Photolysis of Nitrosyl Bromide

摘要

One candidate for the development of a tunable laser in the mid- infrared for use as a defensive countermeasure exploits the NO transition at 5.4 micronmeter. The difficulty with this laser is that when Br2 and NO are present in a mixture, nitrosyl bromide (BrNO) is also created. The absorption bands present in BrNO complicate the design of such a laser. This thesis determines the forward and reverse rate constants of the reaction of Br2 and NO to form BrNO following the photolysis BrNO at low pressure using Fourier Transform infrared absorption spectroscopy, where samples contain either Br2 or NO in excess. The use of Br2 versus NO as the excess reagent has an effect on which mechanism can be used to describe the reaction, but does not affect the reaction rate constants. When NO is the excess reagent, the reaction obeys pseudo first-order kinetics, but in both cases, third-order kinetics accurately describe the Br2 + 2NO.