Investigation of the photoactivation mechanism of Fe3(CO)12 using time-resolved x-ray solution scattering

Trimetallic carbonyl clusters (M3(CO)12) containing group 8 elements such as iron, ruthenium and osmium are historic molecules in the field of organometallic photochemistry and are known as efficient photocatalysts. While the excited-state behavior M3(CO)12 has been intensively studied with several spectroscopic tools, considering the lack of sensitivity of the spectroscopic methods to the global molecular structure, we believe that the assignments, especially the structural identities of reaction intermediates, reported from previous studies should be further supported by additional experimental evidence obtained with a direct structural probe. Here, we aim to investigate the structural dynamics of the photoreaction of Fe3(CO)12 using time-resolved x-ray liquidography (TRXL), which is directly sensitive to the molecular structure. By doing so, we seek to verify whether the assignments of the reaction pathways reported from the previous literature are valid.