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Dissociative attachment of low-energy electrons to acetonitrile

  • Regular Article – Atomic and Molecular Collisions
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The European Physical Journal D Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We experimentally probed the low-energy electron-induced dissociation of acetonitrile and acetonitrile-\(\hbox {d}_3\) and performed density functional theory calculations to support the experimental results. The previous studies on electron attachment to acetonitrile presented a number of contradictory findings, which we aimed to resolve in the present study. We observed the formation of \(\hbox {H}^-\), \(\hbox {CH}_2^-\), \(\hbox {CH}_3^-\), \(\hbox {CN}^-\), \(\hbox {CCN}^-\), \(\hbox {CHCN}^-\) and \(\hbox {CH}_2 \hbox {CN}^-\) anions and the corresponding deuterated fragments for acetonitrile-\(\hbox {d}_3\) by dissociative electron attachment, and measured ion yields curves of each fragment. We saw no evidence for associative electron attachment to form the parent ion in these measurements. We also have measured the kinetic energy and angular distribution of selected fragments using a velocity map imaging (VMI) spectrometer.

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Data availability statement

This manuscript has no associated data or the data will not be deposited. [Authors’ comment: All the data will be provided at reasonable request by the authors.]

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Dr Juraj Fedor for valuable suggestions and fruitful discussion throughout the entire stage of the present work. L.T. acknowledges the support from COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action CA18212 - Molecular Dynamics in the GAS phase (MD-GAS). The work has been supported by the Czech Science Foundation Project Nr. 20-11460S.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences, Dolejškova 3, 18223, Prague, Czech Republic

    Thomas F. M. Luxford, Jaroslav Kočišek & Pamir Nag

  2. Institut für Ionenphysik und Angewandte Physik Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstraße 25, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria

    Lukas Tiefenthaler

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  1. Thomas F. M. Luxford
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  2. Jaroslav Kočišek
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  3. Lukas Tiefenthaler
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  4. Pamir Nag
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Contributions

TL measured performed the experiments with TEM-QMS setup and performed the quantum chemical calculations. JK and LT performed the experiments using CLUB setup. PN performed the experiments with the DEA-VMI setup. TL and PN prepared the manuscript. All the authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript and approved it.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pamir Nag.

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Luxford, T.F.M., Kočišek, J., Tiefenthaler, L. et al. Dissociative attachment of low-energy electrons to acetonitrile. Eur. Phys. J. D 75, 230 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-021-00246-w

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