Evaporative cooling and reaction of carbon dioxide clusters by low-energy electron attachment

Mengyuan Fan; Jingchen Xie; Enliang Wang; Shan Xi Tian

doi:10.1063/5.0179993

Evaporative cooling and reaction of carbon dioxide clusters by low-energy electron attachment

J Chem Phys. 2024 Jan 28;160(4):044301. doi: 10.1063/5.0179993.

Authors

Mengyuan Fan¹, Jingchen Xie¹, Enliang Wang^{2

3}, Shan Xi Tian^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
² Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
³ Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
⁴ Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230088, China.

PMID: 38251801
DOI: 10.1063/5.0179993

Abstract

Anionic carbonate CO3- has been found in interstellar space and the Martian atmosphere, but its production mechanism is in debate so far. To mimic the irradiation-induced reactions on icy micrograins in the Martian atmosphere and the icy shell of interstellar dust, here we report a laboratory investigation on the dissociative electron attachments to the molecular clusters of CO2. We find that anionic species (CO2)n-1O- and (CO2)n- (n = 2, 3, 4) are produced in the concerted reaction and further stabilized by the evaporative cooling after the electron attachment. We further propose a dynamics model to elucidate their competitive productions: the (CO2)n- yields survive substantially in the molecular evaporative cooling at the lower electron attachment energy, while the reactions leading to (CO2)n-1O- are favored at the higher attachment energy. This work provides new insights into physicochemical processes in CO2-rich atmospheres and interstellar space.