Vibrational energy distribution of SiO produced via the chemical activation of SiH3OH

Vibrationally excited SiO has been observed in the 193 nm photolysis of N2O /SiH4 mixtures with and without great excess of H-2. While SiH4 + O(D-1) (1 ) has been known to produce SiO in the mixture without H-2, present kinetic analyses of SiO and OH indicate that SiH3 + OH (2) is responsible for the SiO production in the mixture with H-2. The observed nascent vibrational di stributions, approximated by Boltzmann distributions of T-v = 5200 +/- 660 K for (1) and 2800 +/- 790 K for (2), are reasonably accounted for by a sta tistical model assuming multi-step unimolecular decomposition of hot silano l.