Multiple ionization and fragmentation of isolated pyrene and coronene molecules in collision with ions
Résumé
The interaction of multiply charged ions (He2+, O3+, and Xe20+) with gas-phase pericondensed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules of coronene (C24H12) and pyrene (C16H10) is studied for low-velocity collisions (v ≤ 0.6 a.u.). The mass spectrometric analysis shows that singly and up to quadruply charged intact molecules are important reaction products. The relative experimental yields are compared with the results of a simple classical over-the-barrier model. For higher molecular charge states, the experimental yields decrease much more strongly than the model predictions due to the instabilities of the multiply charged PAH molecules. Even-odd oscillations with the number of carbon atoms, n, in the intensity distributions of the CnHx+ fragments indicate a linear chain structure of the fragments similar to those observed for ion-C60 collisions. The latter oscillations are known to be due to dissociation energy differences between even- and odd-n Cn-chain molecules. For PAH molecules, the average numbers of H atoms attached to the CnHx chains are larger for even-n reflecting acetylenic bond systems.