Photofragmentation of organic molecules of biological interest: The pyrimidine and 2Br-pyrimidine cases

Molecular fragmentation induced in organic molecules by absorption of VUV and soft X-ray radiation can cause damage on living organisms. In this work, the site-selective molecular fragmentation of pyrimidine and 2Br-pyrimidine has been studied and explained as a combined effect of the selective electron decay of a localised core vacancy and the selective fragmentation of specific valence shell electronic states.