Mainz 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 20: Poster – Molecular Collisions and Kinetics

MO 20.2: Poster

Mittwoch, 4. März 2026, 17:00–19:00, Philo 1. OG

Insights into the activation of small molecules by transition metal ions — Marcel Meta, Maximilian Huber, •Maurice Birk, Martin Wedele, Boris Heeb, and Jennifer Meyer — RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Fachbereich Chemie und Landesforschungszentrum OPTIMAS, Kaiserslautern, Germany

A model process for single atom catalysis can be the study of isolated transition metal ion molecule reactions in the gas phase [1,2]. Here, we present studies of the dynamics on the activation of small organic molecules by transition metal cations. Nominally spin-forbidden reactions proceed via intersystem crossing (ISC) in the presence of such metal cations. The impact of ISC on the dynamics is studied by collaborative effort combining experiment and theory.

We used crossed-beam velocity map imaging to measure differential cross sections for the activation of methane and carbon dioxide with different transition metal cations [3,4]. These reactions show dominantly indirect dynamics which is associated to the formation of a long-lived intermediate complex. In addition recent theoretical studies confirmed our observations regarding the reaction with Ta⁺ and methane which revealed that the bottleneck of this reaction is ISC between the quintet and triplet states.

[1] D. K. Böhme, H. Schwarz, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2005, 44, 2336; [2] H. Schwarz, Catal. Sci. Tech. 2017, 7, 4302; [3] M. Meta, Faraday Discuss. 2024, 251, 587; [4] M. Meta et al., J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2023, 14, 24, 5524

Keywords: Crossed-Beams; Velocity Map Imaging; Methane; Carbon Dioxide; Transition Metals